Rabin Defeats No-confidence Vote After Rancorous Debate in Knesset

The government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin defeated a no-confidence motion brought before the Knesset on Monday to challenge the signing of an agreement that will bring Palestinian self-government to the Gaza Strip and West Bank town of Jericho.

While the no-confidence motion was handily defeated by a vote of 52-41, the debate preceding the voting was stormy, even by Israeli standards.

Likud Knesset member David Levy, a former foreign minister in the government of Yitzhak Shamir, charged that the agreement scheduled to be signed later in the week in Cairo was nothing less than “the charter for a Palestinian state.”

Defending the government’s position, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres countered that “the die is cast and we are on the right, the historic, the moral road.”

As Peres spoke, the Knesset bore more resemblance to a soccer stadium than to a chamber of deputies as the Likud benches erupted in frenzied, near hysterical rage, all but drowning out the foreign minister’s words.

But Peres was undeterred.

“We have no desire to oppress another people. Instead, we want to enable the Palestinians to run their lives with dignity. And 84 percent of Israelis back our withdrawal from Gaza,” he said.

“You were in power for 15 years, and you had no solution to the problem,” he taunted his Likud opponents, adding that the whole concept of Palestinian autonomy had originally been espoused by former Likud Prime Minister Men-achem Begin when he signed the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979.

Just prior to the vote, two Knesset members from the right-right Moledet Party, Rehavam Ze’evi and Yosef BaGad unfurled black umbrellas to cries of “Chamberlain! Chamberlain!”

They were referring to former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who had attempted to appease Adolf Hitler prior to the start of World War II.

The two Knesset members were expelled from the chamber.