Members of the Labor Alignment, the Democratic Movement for Change and Sheli held a meeting yesterday to launch a new opposition grouping called the “Movement for Other Zionism” which its organizers described as an alternative to the hawkish line of Likud.
Participants gathered in a grove overlooking Jerusalem and displayed placards reading, “The Allon Plan died. The Green Line died. What will be the next victim?” Referring to the policy announced last Sunday that the government will provide services to residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip equal to that of Israelis, speaker after speaker demanded to know why the government decided to begin with “equalization of services” in the administered territories before it did so in Israel itself.
Yoram Alster, of the DMC, said Premier Menachem Begin did not receive a mandate from the electorate to implement his hawkish views, but came to power merely as a result of internal disunity within the dovish camp. Uri Sella, of the Alignment, warned that the Likud government represented a threat to Israel and therefore had to be fought “with all possible means”. Eliezer Ronen, also of the Alignment, declared: “We should not be called sane Zionists, but rather those who are crazy enough to fight for our cause.”
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