Mrs. Meir Appeals for Labor Unity

Premier Golda Meir made an urgent appeal last night for unity within her Labor Alignment. Although her words were directed primarily at the internal controversy generated by charges made by Histadrut Secretary General Yitzhak Ben Aharon, the Premier was also responding to the growing concern that the ruling Labor Alignment is no longer the “impregnable fortress” it was once considered to be as indicated by last week’s Histadrut elections.

The Labor Alignment dropped 3.76 percentage points below its 1969 showing. Far more significant were the gains recorded by the Likud in certain key Labor strongholds and the surprising support given the Black Panthers –in their first political try-out–in new immigrant townships and poverty areas.

Mrs. Meir replied sharply to accusations by Ben Aharon that the Labor Party leadership–veterans of Mrs. Meir’s Mapai faction –deliberately dragged their feet in the Histadrut election campaign in order to discredit him. The Mapai wing has refused to guarantee their support for Ben Aharon’s reelection to the Histadrut post and he has threatened to resign.

The Premier said she had no cause to “come on bended knee and apologize” to Ben Aharon, “not I and not other leaders like (Finance Minister Pinhas) Sapir.” She said there was no reason for the Labor Alignment to enter next month’s Knesset elections with an inferiority complex. In appealing for unity, she said: “The question is not so much the Likud opposition from outside, but unity from within that matters,”

With the Histadrut election results widely regarded as a preview of the forthcoming Knesset elections, political observers scanning the returns from individual cities and townships noted that Likud amassed more than 25 percent of the vote in such predominantly Labor centers as Tel Aviv, Haifa, Kfar Saba and Rishon LeZion. Likud’s best showing was 31 percent in Eilat, the most remote of Israel’s important cities; it polled 27.08, 27.10 and 27.70 respectively in Dimona, Ashdod and Bat Yam which have large immigrant populations.

Similarly, the Black Panthers, which had previously been active in street demonstrations and rallies, displayed a capacity for political organization. They won a surprising 11.35 percent of the vote in Lod which has a large population of immigrants from Soviet Georgia and took 7.27 percent of the Dimona vote. In Beersheba the Black Panthers chalked up nearly 8 percent of the vote giving them four seats on the 41-member Labor Council.