Civil Marriages Bill Postponed Meir Warns Cabinet Would Resign if Alignment Discipline is Violated

A series of complicated maneuvers among partners of Premier Golda Meir’s coalition government put to an end today the threat of a government crisis over Liberal Party efforts to introduce a limited bill for civil marriages, which are not permitted now in Israel.

Gideon Hausner introduced in the Knesset today a private members bill on behalf of his Independent Liberal Party with the announced support of Mapam, the Labor alignment’s partner. Hausner, in introducing the measure, insisted he was not seeking a change in the status quo, in which the state-recognized Orthodox rabbinate controls all such matters of personal status. Rather, he said, he was seeking to “alleviate the misery” of such categories of Jews as mamzerim (children considered illegitimate by the Orthodox rabbinate), divorcees and kohanim who are barred from marriage to divorcees in Israel by the rabbinate. Since, he contended, his bill did not interfere with the status quo, there was no reason why the Independent Liberals should be evicted from the Cabinet on that issue.

Mrs. Meir replied that the bill was a “clear violation” of the status quo. She said she agreed that the situation was a “sorry one” for the Jews for whom the measure was designed. However, she added, the Independent Liberals had been aware of that situation when they signed the coalition contract and could not renege on it.

That issue became moot when Mrs. Meir said that if the Mapam supported the Hausner bill, she and her Cabinet would resign. Thereupon the vote on the bill was postponed at the request of Mapam.

Observers said that all this meant that since the Knesset goes into recess in less than a month, the issue will be discussed among coalition party leaders informally until some acceptable formula is found and then brought to the House, again at some unspecified later date. They remarked. however, that the postponement was not a solution. The issue will have to be faced, they said, unless Mapam can find some way of withdrawing its support or touch off a Cabinet collapse by voting for it when it comes up again in the Knesset.