The Mapai leadership made another last-minute concession today in its bid to achieve a “small coalition” and thus avert new elections to end Israel’s six-week old Government crisis.
The latest proposal under consideration by the National Religious party and the Progressive party called for their joining a small coalition cabinet under Finance Minister Levi Eshkol as Prime Minister and David Ben-Gurion as Defense Minister, The initial version of the proposal would have had Mr. Ben-Gurion return to the Prime Minister’s post after a few months. That feature was greeted coldly by the Progressive party.
In today’s maneuver, Mapai indicated it would not insist on a time limit for Mr. Ben-Gurion’s resuming the Prime Minister’s post. The Mapai set tomorrow as the deadline for replies from the Religious party and the Progressives whose governing bodies were scheduled to meet tonight for a decision.
Mr, Eshkol was pressing hard today for a way out of the crisis created by Mr. Ben-Gurion’s resignation on January 31. In this he was spurred by a report from his economic advisers of an estimated total cost for new elections of about 150, 000, 000 pounds ($84, 000,000) which the advisers said could cause a “grave shock” to the country.
As one of his efforts, Mr. Eshkol said that Mapam and Achdut Avodah–the Mapai’s erstwhile left-wing partners in the outgoing coalition–should take the initiative to restore “human relations” with the Mapai party which would make it possible for them to rejoin a coalition. The two parties had expressed strong opposition to serving under Mr. Ben-Gurion again. At the same time, the Prime Minister was reported to have agreed to serve as Defense Minister in a reconstituted coalition only if the two left-wing parties were not in it.
Another reported factor in Mapai’s sustained effort to end the crisis by negotiation Was a finding given to the Mapai secretariat of the results of a secret public opinion poll on the probable outcome of new elections if they were held now. The poll indicated that the party would lose at least 16 of its present 47 Knesset seats in an immediate election. The secretariat was understood to attach considerable weight to the poll since the same pollsters predicted with considerable accuracy the size of the Mapai victory in the last election in 1959.
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