Word: eshkol
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David Ben-Gurion, 79, has been of two minds about Levi Eshkol, 70. First, he named him heir to Israel and the Mapai Party. Then, two years later, he proclaimed Eshkol "unfit to govern," and announced that he would challenge him at the polls. Last week, in Israel's national elections, Ben-Gurion turned out to be right the first time-when he let Eshkol become Premier...
...Mapai Party won 43 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, one more than it had held before the election. With the aid of its traditional allies among the smaller labor, religious and Arab parties, Eshkol should have no trouble when it comes to forming a coalition. Ben-Gurion's Rafi Party, a splinter of the Mapai, formed to challenge Eshkol earlier this year, made a poor showing. Rafi won ten seats, though Ben-Gurion had hoped for 15 or 20. Most observers had thought he would get them too, after Rafi collected 12% of the vote in the September...
...Histadrut elections, in fact, may have been responsible for Mapai's eventual triumph. Shocked by their results, Eshkol fired his campaign managers, revved up his multimillion-dollar campaign. Chief strategist and fund raiser: silver-tongued Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir. Publicity director: equally eloquent Deputy Premier Abba Eban, former Ambassador to the United Nations. Eshkol himself campaigned as the candidate of unity and stability, asked only for "four years of quiet to work," and pleasantly referred to Ben-Gurion's shrill taunts as "our little rupture in Mapai." On election day, the Mapai mobilized 60,000 "volunteers...
...Gurion thereupon, in the interests of securing "justice" for Lavon, broke with Mapai, taking with him a handful of younger politicians including Agriculture Minister Moshe Dayan, 50, and Deputy Defense Minister Shimon Peres, 42-and wound up naming a complete, 120-man list of candidates for the Knesset. Furious, Eshkol has fought back with the full force of the Mapai organization and with scathing newspaper advertisements that denounce "the old man at Sde Boker" as the prophet who, in the Talmudic phrase, "prophesied and knew not whereof he prophesied...
...holds the balance of power between the moderately socialistic Mapai, the right-wing Gahal, and the half a dozen smaller, religious, and Arab parties that must be used to form any coalition. It will also mean he is in a good position to dictate a Cabinet to Levi Eshkol...