The central committee of the embattled Mapai Party dismissed last night the 64-member party Secretariat, and then promptly re-elected most of the body, eliminating 11 members who are backing former Premier David Ben-Gurion.
The new, 53-member Secretariat retains Moshe Dayan, who resigned as Agricultural Minister in support of Mr. Ben-Gurion’s fight against Premier Levi Eshkol, and Uzi Fienerman. The central committee acted after the Tel Aviv district court issued an injunction last Friday forbidding the Secretariat to function on grounds that the Ben-Gurion supporters in the Secretariat had not been invited to a meeting of that top Mapai body. The Secretariat resigned in a body after the court order was issued.
To forestall new complications, the central committee first approved the Secretariat decision to resign, and then formally dismissed it. The 11 members not re-elected are members of the Israel Workers List, organized by Mr. Ben-Gurion as an independent list for the November Parliamentary elections. The Ben-Gurion group had claimed that the Secretariat decision to resign was binding only on those who voted for it.
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