The National Religious Party’s "young guard" took measures today that will delay–and may prevent–the NRP from joining Premier Golda Meir’s new coalition government. Opponents have called for a meeting of the party’s central committee–its supreme body between conventions–to reverse the decision by the NRP’s veteran leadership to enter the government. The committee may meet tomorrow.
The party’s executive committee voted 30-17 last night to join the coalition. That decision was upheld by a slim five percent margin at a stormy meeting today of the enlarged executive. The margin was much smaller than had been expected and this encouraged the party’s militants and their supporters among religious settlers to try to overturn the majority decision.
The "young guard" headed by MKs Zevulun Hammer and Yehuda Ben Meir obtained sufficient signatures to convene the central committee and also got an injunction from the party court prohibiting the NRP from joining the government until the central committee meets. The meeting was scheduled for Monday, one day after Premier Meir’s new deadline for completing her Cabinet slate. But it could be advanced to tomorrow.
DEEP SPLIT WITHIN NRP
Today’s meeting of the enlarged executive committee, marked by shouting, interruptions and in one case fisticuffs, illustrated the deep split within the NRP. Defections from the position of the party’s veteran leaders–some of them ministers in the care-taker regime–were attributed to yesterday’s warning by Rabbi Tzvi Kook that he would sever ties with the NRP if it joined the government against the wishes of the Chief Rabbinate.
The Rabbinate has forbidden the party to accept a compromise on the Who is a Jew issue. But Interior Minister Yosef Burg insisted today that the decision to join the Meir government did not run counter to the Chief Rabbinate’s ruling. According to Burg, that ruling was aimed against certain specific proposals. The NRP, he said, has since received somewhat changed proposals for a compromise and these, coupled with the deteriorating security situation on the Syrah front created new facts on which the party voted, he said.
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