Nrp Rejects Bid to Join Labor-led Coalition Government

The National Religious Party Executive decided unanimously today not to join a Labor-led coalition government headed by Yitzhak Rabin. NRP secretary general Zvi Bernstein who announced the result of the voting in which only one member abstained, stressed that the Labor Party had made no new proposals toward meeting NRP demands. These were the formation of a national unity government including Likud and a commitment to amend the Law of Return to comply with Orthodox demands on the Who is a Jew issue.

A resolution adopted by the NRP Executive said.

“Having noted that there are no suggestions toward fulfilling the basic demands of the NRP (the Executive) decides that no appropriate conditions to join the Cabinet were formed” Yosef Burg, Interior Minister in the care-taker government who had voted to join the Meir coalition last March in defiance of the Chief Rabbinate and internal NRP opposition, said he supported today’s decision. He expressed regret that the traditional partnership between Labor and the NRP has ended and predicted that a government based on only 61 Knesset seats out of 120 was doomed from the start.

Such a government, representing a partnership between Labor, the Independent Liberal Party and the Civil Rights Party appeared today to be Rabin’s only alternative unless he is prepared to report failure to President Ephraim Katzir and return his mandate. Rabin has only 10 more days in which to form a government. He has said he would not ask for an extension. The NRP’s militant “Young Guard.” elated by the party’s decision, proposed the formation of an NRP-Likud coalition which would command 54 Knesset seats and would be the largest opposition bloc in Israel’s history.