Word: knesset
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...hour earlier, which were compiled from a meticulously conducted poll of voters as they left their polling stations. The immediate TV predictions: Labor would get 48 or 49 seats, Likud 47, and the other parties would divide up the remaining 24 or 25 seats in the 120-member Israeli Knesset...
...struggle for power between Prime Minister Menachem Begin, 67, head of the ruling Likud bloc, and Shimon Peres, 57, leader of the Labor Party. Both men immediately started to try to put together a coalition government that would control at least 61 seats, the number needed for a Knesset majority. Begin clearly had the best chance of succeeding, but the likelihood was that any government's margin would be so slim that new elections might have to be called within a year...
...were arguing that Labor should let Begin have the job again and then stand back and watch him fail as he tried to cope with the country's mounting economic problems, like an annual inflation rate of 130%. Predicts Michael Harish, 44, an energetic Labor member of the Knesset: "Soon all those who are shouting 'Begin, Begin' will be demonstrating in the streets...
Meanwhile, a broader debate raged over the wisdom of Israel's raid on the Iraqi reactor. At a committee meeting in the Knesset, Begin said that U.S. authorities had given him a document that supported his suspicions that Iraq was indeed planning to build a bomb. In fact, the document, although raising concerns about Iraq's ultimate intentions, stopped far short of what Begin claimed. Admitted a highly placed Israeli source: "The aim of the paper was to play down the possible danger of the reactor...
...election neared, it appeared that Begin's hard-line strategy of recent weeks was going down well in Israel. Polls last January showed his Likud coalition trailing far behind, with Labor in reach of obtaining an absolute majority in the Knesset. But in a poll taken just before the raid, Likud pulled ahead of Labor, 38% to 33%, and Menachem Begin appeared to be within reach of another four-year term. -By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by David Aikman/Jerusalem and Louis Halasz at the United Nations, with other bureaus