The new Cabinet of Premier Designate Levi Eshkol will receive its expected vote of confidence and swearing in tomorrow morning in Israel’s Parliament.
Normally, the installation of the new Government would follow completion of debate in the Knesset, which is scheduled to end tonight. However, three of the Cabinet Ministers of the National Religious party are attending the party’s national convention in Tel Aviv, necessitating the brief postponement.
The Premier-Designate presented his proposed Government, based on the same political groupings as the one dissolved by the surprise resignation on June 16 of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, to the Knesset yesterday. The debate which followed included a warning by Herut leader Menachem Beigin that if the new Prime Minister failed to implement “the Knesset resolution about West German scientists working for Egypt,” Herut would press for new elections.
Mr. Beigin also assailed Deputy Defense Minister Shimon Peres charging that he had “misled” the public and the Israel Foreign Affairs Committee on the issue of the West German scientists and had indirectly caused the resignation of Israel’s security service chief. That official, whose name is never made public, resigned after Prime Minister Ben-Gurion reportedly rebuked him for the manner in which the issue of the West German scientists was handled.
LIBERALS SEEK MORE EXPLANATIONS FROM BEN-GURION FOR HIS RESIGNATION
Izhar Harari of the Liberal party said that Mr. Ben-Gurion owed the nation a more illuminating explanation of his resignation than “personal reasons.” Mr. Ben-Gurion resigned both as Prime Minister and Defense Minister and also as a member of Parliament. Under pressure of his Mapai colleagues, he canceled his resignation as a Knesset deputy.
The Liberal deputy also contended that Pinhas Sapir should not be permitted to hold indefinitely both the Commerce Ministry he has in the present Cabinet and the Finance Ministry which he will have in the new one. In the new Government Mr. Eshkol will be also Defense Minister, as was Mr. Ben-Gurion, while the Finance Ministry will be temporarily headed by Mr. Sapir.
The Liberal deputy also criticized the plan for replacement of Abba Eban by veteran Mapai leader Zalman Aranne as Education Minister. Mr. Eban will become Deputy Prime Minister, a new post.
Yaacov Hazan of Mapam said that the Labor parties should have tried to form a new Government. He conceded that Achdut Avodah, which will continue in the new Government, had made such an effort, but that the “failure” of the effort proved that Achdut Avodah had little influence in the Government.
He reiterated that Mapam had declined the Achdut Avodah bid to join the new Government because this would have meant implied approval of the deeds of the outgoing Government. Mapam is strongly opposed to the Ben-Gurion bid for diplomatic ties with West Germany and the Ben-Gurion stand on handing of Israel’s Arab minority. The Mapam deputy said the new Government was not ready to alter any of the basic policies of the outgoing one.
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