Peres Defends New Government

Premier Shimon Peres offered a spirited defense of the new Labor-Likud unity government after a grueling eight-hour Knesset debate which ended in the early hours of Friday morning with an overwhelming parliamentary endorsement of the new regime.

Although the broad-based coalition was challenged by both left and right wing factions, Peres’ remarks were aimed primarily at Mapam which withdrew from its alignment of more than 20 years with the Labor Party because it refuses to participate in a government with Likud.

A unity government is no sin, Peres declared in his summation at the end of the debate. He reminded Mapam that it had in fact participated in a unity coalition with Likud in the past.

The Knesset voted 89-18 to approve the new government. The dissenters on the left were Mapam, the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), the Hadash (Communist) Party and the Progressive List for Peace. Rightwing opponents were the Tehiya Party and Rabbi Meir Kahane’s one-man Kach faction. MK Mordechai Virshubsky, whose left-of-center Shinui party is part of the new coalition, abstained.

PREMIER REJECTS MAPAM’S VIEW

Peres maintained that Mapam Secretary General Victor Shemtov was deluding himself that Labor, with 44 Knesset mandates to 41 for Likud, could have established a viable coalition on its own. To do that would have required wholesale concessions to the religious parties against which Mapam would have been the first to object, Peres said.

He rejected allegations that Labor abandoned its principles as the price of a unity government. Likud too made major concessions, he said. “The Likud has not given up its views but neither has the (Labor) Alignment,” Peres declared. “We did not come to blur our differences, to furl flags, to surrender. We came to search for a way which, despite the differences, would explore all possible common goals.”

Peres said that such urgent issues as the withdrawal from Lebanon and the economic crisis could be resolved more easily with a national unity government. The economic crisis, he said, could best be eased by mutual understanding, without hardships. (See separate story, P.I.)

On the future of West Bank settlements, Peres said the new government will not remove existing settlements and their further development will be determined by decisions of the new Cabinet.

Peres assumed the Premiership after a 10-year uphill struggle, capped by the equivocal results of the July 23 elections. Under the coalition agreement with Likud, he will serve as Premier for the first 25 months of the four-year plus two-month term of the new government. Yitzhak Shamir, now Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister, will serve as Premier during the second half of the government’s tenure.

A BITTER DEBATE

Peres and his 24-member Cabinet, the largest in Israel’s history, was sworn into office early Friday morning and later in the day was formally presented to President Chaim Herzog. The new government took over some six weeks after the elections ended in a stand-off between Labor and Likud.

But the debate was bitter. Shemtov of Mapam, which, with six Knesset seats, is now the largest opposition faction, charged that the new government paves the way for Ariel Sharon to pursue his declared ambition to become Prime Minister.

The former Defense Minister, found by the Kahan Commission to bear indirect responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps massacre in 1982, has been named Minister of Commerce and Industry in the unity Cabinet, a senior portfolio. By acquiescing to this, Labor itself has contributed to the rehabilitation of a politician it once considered to be in disgrace, Shemtov said.

Yossi Sarid, a one-time close associate of Peres who quit the Labor Party in protest against the coalition with Likud and has joined the CRM, claimed that Labor has now become a second division of Likud. He also alleged that there is discrimination against Arabs in Israel “reminiscent of apartheid.”

Labor MK Yaacov Jacques Amir denounced that charge as “ridiculous and disgraceful.” He suggested that Sarid resign from the Knesset and return his mandate to the Labor Party.

On the right, speakers for Tehiya warned that the new government posed a threat to the future of “the land of Israel,” meaning Israel’s incorporation of all of the occupied territories. Geula Cohen claimed that under the Labor-Likud guidelines, the new government would have to negotiate about the future of Jerusalem if that issue was raised by a Jordanian delegation to future peace talks.

About 20 MKs representing Labor, Mapam and the CRM walked out of the Knesset chamber when Kahane began his speech on behalf of Kach. Kahane was cut short by Knesset Speaker Shlomo Hillel when he exceeded the time limit for speeches.

CHANGING OF THE GUARD AT THE DEFENSE MINISTRY

Meanwhile, there was a change of the guard at the Defense Ministry Friday when the incoming Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin formally took over from his Likud predecessor, Moshe Arens. The ceremonial transfer of authority was marked by fanfare as Rabin, accompanied by his wife, Leah, was greeted by Chief of Staff Gen. Moshe Levy at the Defense Ministry-Army General Headquarters compound in Tel Aviv.

Rabin had warm words of praise for Arens who, he noted, took over the ministry at a difficult time, during the war in Lebanon. He promised that the Israel Defense Force would be withdrawn from south Lebanon as soon as the security of Israel’s northern borders is assured.