Mapai Majority Rebuffs Ben-gurion’s Demands; Mapam May Support Mapai

The possibility that the opposition Mapam party would throw its support to Premier Levi Eshkol in his bitter Mapai party leadership struggle with former David Ben-Gurion emerged today after the Premier’s supporters rebuffed demands of the minority Mapai faction.

The majority reply, hammered out in a marathon nine-hour meeting of the Mapai Bureau and the Mapai Secretariat, condemned the “threat” to the party’s integrity stemming from “calls to dissent” or from Ben-Gurion’s call to his followers to form an independent list for the forthcoming Parliamentary elections. The minority faction indicated last week it would wait until July 1 for an approach from the majority before proceeding with an independent list.

The reply, contained in a communique prepared by a special committee named by the Secretariat, was uncompromising. The communique demanded dissolution of all party factions and called on all members of the party to unite behind Premier Levi Eshkol’s leadership. The communique denounced as “untrue and unjustified” minority charges of “moral deterioration” in the party under that leadership.

Shimon Peres, a strong Ben-Gurion supporter who quit as Deputy Defense Minister last month in the abrasive leadership conflict, told the Secretariat that Ben-Gurion had not really called for a split. He asked that no communique be issued until matters were clarified. However, the decision to go ahead with the communique was taken by majority vote. The communique brought a pledge of support to the party from its strong Haifa branch.

As the crisis deepened, imperiling labor’s continuous leadership of Israel, Mapam leaders indicated that if the Mapai struggle posed the threat of the loss by Israel’s general labor movement of control of the government, Mapam would support the Premier to assure his continuance of Premier and of Israel a labor leadership.