Three top leaders of the Democratic Movement for Change (DMC), two of them Cabinet ministers, have given new impetus to mounting sentiments within the party to quit Premier Menachem Begin’s Likud-led coalition government because of its hard line stand on peace issues.
The strongest attack yet on the government’s policies was made by the DMC’s deputy leader, Amnon Rubinstein, in a television interview yesterday. The former law professor who founded the “Shinui” (Change) movement after the Yom Kippur War, the original nucleus of the DMC, charged that the government’s peace efforts were in fact “anti-peace.”
He said the Begin government has become “progressively severe” in its positions and that the Cabinet majority composed of Likud and the National Religious Party “totally ignored the DMC as if we do not exist.”
Rubinstein’s views apparently are shared by Transport Minister Meir Amit and Minister of Social Betterment Yisrael Katz. Amit, regarded as one of the strongest figures in the DMC, has also expressed concern over the ineffectual voice of his party in the government. Amit is presently visiting the U.S. but Katz indicated here today that he tended to agree with Rubinstein and thought it was necessary to review the DMC’s participation in the government if there are no changes of policy soon.
DMC leader Yigael Yadin, who is Deputy Premier, reacted coldly to the voices of dissent. He still maintains that the DMC can have a modifying effect on policy if it remains in the government. He chided Rubinstein for expressing his views publicly before taking them up in the party’s policy-making bodies.
Although the group within the DMC that favors quitting the government is still in the minority, Rubinstein, Amit and Katz together pose a powerful challenge to Yadin’s leadership.
Meanwhile, a new group called “Professors for True Peace” has emerged to champion Begin’s policies. In newspaper ads today signed by about 400 academicians, they accuse the Peace Now movement of distorting the situation. They claim it is not the Begin government but Egypt that has responded inflexibly to Israel’s “generous offers.”
Prominent in the new group are Binyamin Uffenheimer and his wife, Rivka Shatz. He is a Biblical scholar and she is one of the foremost authorities on Hasidism. Both have long been associated with right-wing causes. But others who signed the ad are new to public politics. The group denounced the Peace Now movement for seeking support abroad which, it claims, plays into the hands of Israel’s enemies.
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