The U.S. ambassador’s Independence Day reception, scheduled for July 4, helped Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and his Likud rival, Ariel Sharon, resolve a bitter dispute over when to convene the party’s Central Committee, which Sharon chairs.
Both men saved face in the process.
Sharon, the minister of industry and trade, called the Central Committee into session for a referendum on Shamir’s peace initiative, which Sharon vehemently opposes.
They agreed originally that it would be held in Tel Aviv on July 2. But the only hall big enough to contain the nearly 2,000 delegates was booked on that date.
Shamir had the meeting shoved back to July 4. Sharon kept the July 2 date, but shifted the venue to Jerusalem and sent out invitations.
Each man insisted he was not consulted by the other. The Likud Secretariat, headed by Foreign Minister Moshe Arens, Shamir’s ally, upheld the July 4 date.
Sharon, returning from a trip abroad Sunday night, said the party leadership had staged a “putsch.”
But he and Shamir met Tuesday and agreed to hold the Central Committee meeting on July 5. Sharon played down their earlier dispute as a “misunderstanding.”
Shamir, holding out for the July 4 date when he addressed a meeting of Likud activists Monday in Tel Aviv, was “reminded” by another speaker that July 4 was the day of the American ambassador’s reception, an event that is not to be missed.
The prime minister was overheard remarking to an aide, “Why didn’t anyone think of that before?”
But settling the date did not solve the more substantive disputes between Shamir and Sharon.
One is Sharon’s demand that the Central Committee vote to accept or reject the peace initiative, which calls for, among other things, Palestinian elections in the territories.
The prime minister insists that inasmuch as the plan has been approved by the Cabinet and the Knesset, the party must accept it unaltered.
The Central Committee will meet in Tel Aviv’s cavernous Cinerama building. There will be an opening statement by Shamir, followed by a five-hour debate.
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