World Labor Zionist Parley Opens Today in Israel; Will Discuss Role of Jewish Agency

Proposals for the transfer of functions from the Jewish Agency to the Government of Israel will be considered at the conference of Ichud, the world labor Zionist movement, which opens tomorrow at the Berl Katznelson Institute.

According to the organization’s secretariat handling arrangements for the conference, which is to formulate the labor Zionist platform for the forthcoming World Zionist Congress, a majority of the special committee preparing resolutions for submission to the conference favored the transfer of responsibility for absorption of immigrants from the Jewish Agency to the Israel Government.

The role of the Jewish Agency would be in bringing the immigrants into the country and in maintaining them in reception centers until their transfer to work camps. The majority of the committee was also said to favor restriction of the Jewish Agency’s authority on colonization to support and maintenance of new settlements during the first years of their existence.

The committee was reported as unanimous in its belief that the World Zionist Organization be recognized as representing the interests of the Jewish people in respect to Israel but not to the exclusion of minority groups. An Ichud spokesman described this as the difference between priority and monopoly. The Ichud conference will be asked to instruct labor Zionist delegates to the World Zionist Congress to press for priority for the Zionist movement.

The Ichud resolutions committee was reported to be unanimous on the subject of a now kind of Zionist organization in each country, along the lines of the plan advanced by Eliahu Dobkin, head of the Jewish Agency’s organization department. The Ichud proposal calls for a Zionist organization in each country to which both persons belonging to Zionist parties and unaffiliated persons should belong. Parties would continue to fulfill their sectarian functions but Zionist organization decisions would be taken by the larger membership.

A large section of Ichud opinion here was described as favoring the surrender by Israel of its double representation in World Zionist Congresses on condition that Zionist Congress delegates throughout the world be chosen by ballot and not on the basis of shekolim sold. Israeli Premier David Ben Gurion, Josef Sprinzak, speaker of the Parliament, and Berl Locker, chairman of the Jerusalem executive of the Jewish Agency, are expected to address sessions of the Ichud conference.