Two of Israel’s labor parties, Mapam and Achdut Avodah, which have abstained from participating in former cabinets, today decided to join the coalition cabinet now being formed by David Ben Gurion, Premier-designate.
These two parties secured 19 seats in the recent Parliamentary elections. Together with the 40 seats which Ben Gurion’s Mapai party won, the labor members of the Cabinet will have the backing of 59 of their own members in Parliament which is composed of 120 deputies. The Progressive party, which has five seats in Parliament has not decided as yet whether to join the new cabinet, but was represented in all previous governments. The Orthodox Bloc has rejected Ben Gurion’s conditions for joining the Cabinet.
In accepting Ben Gurion’s invitation to join his Cabinet, the Achdut Avodah proposed naming Israel Bar Yehudah as Minister of Interior, Brigadier General Moshe Carmel as Minister of Communications and Zeev Tzur as Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Mapam’s choices for its assigned portfolios were Mordecai Bentov, Minister of Development, and Israel Barzilai, Minister of Health.
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