Rabin's Troubled Start

Even as guns fell silent on the Golan Heights, hostile political shelling within Israel threatened to cut short the life of its budding new government. Factional bitterness and personal acrimony over the choice of Premier-designate Yitzhak Rabin's new 19-member coalition Cabinet have clouded prospects for his long-term success. A thin majority of the 120-member Knesset (Parliament) will probably approve Rabin this week as the country's fifth and youngest (52) Premier.* Nonetheless, many observers believe that new elections, perhaps later this year, must come if Rabin is to secure the mandate he needs to provide Israel with effective leadership.

The commander of Israel's forces in the 1967 Six-Day War and a former Ambassador to Washington, Rabin was selected by a Labor Party Central Committee as Premier-designate after Golda Meir announced her resignation last April 11. Although widely respected by Israeli voters, Rabin has antagonized some members of the Labor establishment by excluding members of the dominant Mapai faction of the Labor Party from important Cabinet posts.

Arab Tilt. Some key offices have gone to dependable veterans: Rabin's old comrade-in-arms Yigal Allon, 55, becomes Foreign Minister as well as continuing as Deputy Premier, while former Transport and Communications Minister Shimon Peres, 51, takes over Defense from Moshe Dayan. But Rabin has appointed others, including five newcomers, who may tilt Israel's new government toward more flexible dealings with Arab nations. Perhaps his most controversial Cabinet choice is Mrs. Shulamit Aloni, 45, head of the dovish Citizens Rights Movement, who advocates the return of most occupied Arab lands in exchange for a Middle East peace accord. Mrs. Aloni's appointment as Minister Without Portfolio makes her the second woman to serve in an Israeli government.

Two other leading Labor stalwarts also rejected offers to serve under the new Premier. Abba Eban, 59, who has feuded with Rabin ever since his appointment as Ambassador to Washington in 1968, was enraged when the Premier-designate offered the Foreign Ministry to Allon. Rubbing salt in the wound, Rabin offered Eban the Minister of Information folio, a lesser Cabinet job that Eban has always considered superfluous. Former Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir, 65--the kingmaker of the Labor Party--flatly refused to stay hi his post. According to Rabin's foes, Sapir even cautioned his chosen successor, Banking Executive Yaacov Levinson, not to accept the Finance portfolio because Sapir believes that the new government will not survive for more than two months. Nor has departing Golda Meir gone out of her way to bolster Rabin's cause. Since he was neither a dyed-in-the-wool Mapai man nor an experienced politician, she was cool to his selection as the new Premier-designate and did not attend all of the Labor Party meetings at which the makeup of the new government was discussed.

Factionalism within the Labor Party has added to Rabin's woes. Members of Labor's traditionally dominant wing, Mapai, simmered over the granting of more power to Allon in the Cabinet--a move that places Allen's own small Labor faction Ahdut Avodah (United Labor) in a commanding position. More upsetting to many party elders is the prospect that a Labor government will for the first time have to rely on the three Arab Party and five Communist Party votes in the Knesset to remain in power. In courting support from these fringe groups and such small progressive parties as the Independent Liberals and the Citizens Rights Movement, Rabin has driven his party's traditional coalition partner, the hawkish National Religious Party, into opposition, thus depriving himself of the N.R.P.'s ten votes and a more broadly based government. "This is not a government to save the country," commented Tel Aviv's mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot, "not a national government, nor even a party government, but in large part a factional government."

The self-effacing and introspective Rabin lacks the toughening political experience of past Israeli leaders, an asset that might help him to deal more firmly with his party's recalcitrants instead of seeming to plead for their cooperation. As he urged Mapai leaders last week, "It's impossible to find the magic formula to please everyone and everything. I propose that we desist from squabbling."

Nevertheless, he intends to press ahead with some clearly set priority goals: rebuilding the prestige of Israel's army, which took a battering in last October's war, opening new diplomatic bridges to the Arabs, and tackling the problems of Israel's underprivileged, notably Jewish immigrants from the Arab world. But whether time and his increasingly sour critics will allow him to do so remains doubtful.

* After David Ben-Gurion, who became Premier at the age of 61, Moshe Sharett at 57, Levi Eshkol at 68, and Golda Meir at 70.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.