Mapam’s opposition to a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip and to the government’s rejection of King Hussein’s territorial plan has angered other quarters of the Labor Alignment. The Mapam Secretariat earlier had criticized the decision to relocate Gaza Strip Bedouins and compensate them for their property so as to establish a Jewish settlement in the Raffah area adjoining the Sinai.
Now the leftist party’s organ, Al Hamishmar, has run an editorial attacking Premier Golda Meir’s denunciation of the Jordanian monarch’s proposal for a federation of the two banks of the Jordan River. Mrs. Meir, It was learned, may convene the Alignment leadership on the disputes.
Members of the centrist Rafi Party are particularly angry with Mapam, charging that its attitude makes it ineligible for continuation in the coalition. Rafi’s most famous name is Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. Mordechai Ben-Porat, a Knesset member, former Rafi leader and now deputy general secretary of the Alignment, asked Mrs. Meir by letter to convene its Political Committee to act against what he termed Mapam’s contrary and incompatible stance.
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