Allon Announces Resignation from Committees, Prompting Political Speculation

Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon announced today that he has resigned from several important ministerial committees in order to devote his full time to the affairs of the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption which he heads. He has requested that his colleague of the Achdut Avodah faction. Minister of Transport Moshe Carmel, be assigned to his seats on the ministerial committees for occupied territories and security affairs which he is relinquishing.

Mr. Allon’s announcement was seen by some observers as bearing out reports of cool relations between him and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol who raised Mr. Allon to the rank of Deputy Prime Minister less than a year ago. Mr. Allon felt, they said, that Mr. Eshkol did not back him strongly enough when plans or suggestions he put forth were at variance with the views of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. Gen. Dayan was regarded by many as the most “hawkish” of Israel’s ministers of the Labor faction. He was also considered to be Mr. Eshkol’s most serious rival for the Premiership, and the elevation of Mr. Allon was widely regarded at the time as a move by the Prime Minister to forestall Gen. Dayan’s ambition for the post. Mr. Eshkol was believed by some to have taken Mr. Allon less and less into his confidence to avoid the appearance that he was his personally-selected “heir apparent.” Mr. Allon reportedly was angered when he returned from a trip to the United States late last year to find that a ministerial committee had been formed to deal with settlement in the Hebron area without his having been consulted or asked to join.