Word: knesset
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...Calm View. While the Arabs shouted, Israel's Premier Levi Eshkol took a surprisingly calm view of the situation. In decidedly conciliatory tones, he said in a speech to the Knesset: "I would like to say to the Arab countries, particularly to Egypt and Syria, that we harbor no aggressive designs, we have no possible interest in violating either their security, their territory or their legitimate rights. We on our part expect the same principles to be applied to us." One reason for Eshkol's restraint, of course, was the knowledge that a good part of the Western...
...many Israelis are eager to teach the Syrians a lesson. "How many 18-year-old Cohens have to be killed before the government activates our legitimate right to national self-defense?" cried Knesset Opposition Leader Menahem Beigin about a youth killed by a Syrian mine. Both Israel and Syria last week accepted U.N. Secretary-General U Thant's plea for talks on farming rights within the demilitarized zone, but the Israelis are skeptical. They believe that Syria is intent only on challenging Israel's territorial rights...
...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...
...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...
...Rafi does as well in the Knesset elections, under Israel's proportional representation system of voting, Ben-Gurion will command between 15 and 20 seats in the Knesset. This will not make him Premier again, but it will mean he 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...