Premier Menachem Begin told the Likud Knesset faction that he was confident Likud would win the next elections, scheduled to be held in 1981. But he said he strongly favored the merger of all of the factions comprising Likud into a single party for which he proposed the name “Likud for Israel Party.”
According to Begin, the public is fed up with Labor Party leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin and their interminable fight for control of the party. It will reaffirm its trust in Likud next year, he said. He also assured the Likud MKs that the Cabinet members no longer engage in internecine bottles but have “turned over a new leaf.” At the last Cabinet meeting, he said, there were no raised voices; no exchanges of insults. The four-hour meeting — brief by Cabinet standards — was business like and efficient, Begin said.
However, there was one jarring note. Herut MK Dov Shilansky deplored attacks by some ministers on Agriculture Minister Ariel Shdron, the leading spokesman for a hard line toward Arabs who create disorders in the occupied territories and for massive Jewish settlement of the West Bank. He referred specifically to a private letter written by Deputy Premier Simcha Ehrlich of the Liberal Party to an unidentified member of the party in which he expressed fear that if Sharon had been named Defense Minister he might have engineered a coup d’etat and ended democratic government in Israel. Ehrlich refused to apologize for the letter which was leaked to the press last week.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
