The prospects that Mapam would break away from the Labor Alignment before the May 17th elections diminished over the weekend. The faction, or at least its veteran leaders, appeared to be satisfied with small changes agreed to by the Labor Party’s political subcommittee with respect to territorial concessions.
Meir Talmi, Mapam’s Secretary General, said he believed that Labor was meeting Mapam’s political demands, more or less, though he would reserve final judgment until the Labor Party drafts its election platform. It remained to be seen whether Mapam’s younger element, which favors a break with Labor, will agree when the faction holds its convention at the end of the month. But political observers believe Mapam is increasingly reluctant to face the electorate on its own.
Labor is anxious to preserve the Alignment in the face of what is shaping up as the most closely contested election campaign in Israel’s history. The political subcommittee, consisting of Labor’s influential inner circle, has been meeting regularly during the past month to hammer out a platform sufficiently dovish to placate Mapam on territorial issues but still acceptable to Labor’s hard liners such as Defense Minister Shimon Peres, former Premier Golda Meir and former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.
Its sessions have been stormy and the concessions to Mapam’s views have been small. At the Labor subcommittee meeting last Thursday agreement was reached to state in the platform that territorial compromise holds good for “all sectors” without specifically mentioning Judaea-Samaria which is the crucial area. It was also agreed in the written platform to eliminate the word “genuine” when speaking of a peace settlement, meaning that Israel would entertain some territorial compromises for less than a full peace with the Arabs. Mapam seems to accept this.
But Minister-Without-Portfolio Israel Galili observed that there will be an oral platform as well as a written one and the former would make clear that while compromises for less than a full peace is possible in the Sinai and Golan Heights, there will be no compromise on the West Bank without a “genuine” peace settlement.
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