Voting Under Fire

An Israeli army Jeep screeched up to a United Nations post overlooking the Suez Canal one day last week, and four dust-covered riders dashed up to the shell-pocked building. While sniper fire whined, the team picked up an election ballot from the lone Israeli soldier assigned to the U.N. outpost.

As Israel held its seventh national elections last week, many others voted under similarly martial conditions. Along the Jordanian border, kibbutzniks lined up a few at a time to avoid attracting shellfire; they dropped their ballots into bullet-and shell-proofed steel boxes. In Jerusalem, Arabs (who account for 150,000 of Israel's 1,750,000 voters) and Jews mingled without incident at polling places. All told, 83% of the eligible voters cast ballots.

In Israel, voters choose parties rather than individual candidates for the 120 seats in the Knesset, or Parliament. The seats are then apportioned among the 16 contending parties according to percentages of the total vote. The results were about what had been expected. Prime Minister Golda Meir's Labor Party collected the largest number of seats. With a slow count still incomplete at week's end, the projection was 56 or possibly 57 seats. With five votes from two Arab parties aligned with Labor, she will have a majority of one or two--just below the three-vote margin she enjoyed on taking office last March.

Mrs. Meir dominated the brief campaign. Her party unfurled huge color posters of the Prime Minister. Reported TIME Correspondent Marlin Levin from Jerusalem: "They had the imperative about them of the command, 'Chicken soup is good for you--so eat.' " At 71, Mrs. Meir outcampaigned younger members of her party and charmed voters with her plain talk. "Even when there is peace," she told audiences, "I will always hold one thing against Nasser. He made killers out of our boys."

There was a slight shift to the right. The right-of-center Gahal Party, which called for annexation of the Arab territories captured in the 1967 war, gained at least one seat and is expected to emerge with 25 or 26 in all. "We won't budge an inch," Gahal Leader Menahem Begin told crowds. Mrs. Meir and other Labor leaders were more vague about the occupied lands, promising simply "no withdrawal without peace."

Whispering Campaign. Despite terrorist threats and pleas from Jordan radio to boycott the election, 10,000 of the 34,000 eligible Arab residents of East Jerusalem, the Jordanian sector of the city until 1967, showed up to vote in municipal elections. The Arab turnout helped return moderate Mayor Teddy Kollek to office for a second term. Kollek was thought to be in trouble because of an effective whispering campaign, sponsored by hard-lining Jewish religious leaders, that he was soft on the Arabs. But the shirt-sleeved mayor was supported by an estimated two-thirds of the Arabs who voted.

Toasting the returns with a small shot glass filled with Israeli champagne and a corned beef sandwich, Mrs. Meir professed to be unconcerned by the small drop in the Labor vote. Rejecting suggestions that she might not be able to form a new Cabinet before year's end, she said: "Pah! Much before then. In a matter of a few weeks." There is a minuscule chance that Defense Minister Moshe Dayan might bolt Labor, take a dozen or so Deputies with him, and try to form a government by coalescing with Gahal and a number of others. Few Israelis expect that to happen now, however. In any case, once assignments are settled, the first order of business may very well be a re-examination of government policy toward the occupied lands.

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