Premier Golda Meir met for an hour today with Gahal opposition leaders Menachem Beigin and Joseph Sapir. Political sources said the meeting went a long way toward re-establishing a normal working relationship between the government and the opposition following yesterday’s stormy debate in the Knesset and the Gahal walk-out. The sources insisted that the meeting had been scheduled earlier in the week and did not stem from yesterday’s events. But bitterness persisted between Gahal and the Meir government. Beigin, who heads Gahal’s militant Herut faction, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that yesterday’s 62-0 vote of confidence in the Meir government was meaningless. The issue was the territorial policy stated by Premier Meir in an interview published in the London Times last Saturday. Gahal and two other opposition groups walked out when the government refused to permit a secret ballot on two no-confidence motions. A secret ballot would have allowed MKs to vote their conscience irrespective of party discipline. Beigin introduced a private bill in the Knesset today calling for dissolution of the Knesset in preparation for new elections. He suggested June 15 as the election date. The Herut chief has been urging new elections on grounds that the present government has no mandate to decide whether or not to yield on the issue of withdrawal from occupied Arab territories.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
