"B.-G." 's Dilemma

Almost never in their long history have the Jews achieved political unity. In modern Israel, though they have gotten together to achieve statehood, the Jews are politically as disunited as ever. The tiny country has accomplished a great deal since its birth three years ago. It has managed to 'survive as a state, in itself no mean feat; it has built an army which has the respect of the hostile Arab nations, and it has gathered in some 600,000 immigrants from Africa, Europe and the Middle East. But political factions, seizing on social and economic grievances, keep Israel in political turmoil.

David Ben-Gurion, who carries beneath the wild halo of his white hair great visions but little patience for political compromise, has ruled the country with difficulty. To satisfy the Jewish Orthodox bloc in his cabinet he accepted the virtual prohibition of civil marriages, the import of pork, the use of public buses on the Sabbath. But when the Orthodox faction demanded that education in the immigrant camps be turned over to the rabbis, Socialist "B.G." exploded, sought new elections. He hoped to win an absolute majority for his Mapai party (ideological twin of the British Labor party) which held only 46 seats of the 120 in the Knesset.

From Dan to Beersheba. One day last week, Israelis went to 1,750 polling places from Dan in the north, to Beersheba in the south. When the votes were counted, B.G. was in as much trouble as ever. His Mapai had increased its popular vote from 35 to 37%, but had emerged with the same 46 seats. The Orthodox religious bloc had lost ground--from 16 to 14 seats. The pro-Soviet Mapam, formerly Israel's No. 2 party, dropped from 19 seats to 15. But B.G. had a new antagonist: into second place, increasing their seats from seven to 20, went the right-of-center General Zionists.

Histadrut & Mapai. The General Zionists don't care much about orthodox religion; they do care about orthodox economics. Pointing to a spectacular decline in the standard of living, the General Zionists campaigned against the tie-up between the Histadrut, the Israeli labor federation, and the cabinet, seven of whose 13 members (including B.G.) were Histadrut members. Histadrut is not only a trade union, enrolling 75% of all Israeli workers; it is also, by far, Israel's largest industrial employer, owning or managing 14% of all the nation's industry, including a virtual monopoly on cement production, bus transportation, agriculture. Charged the General Zionists: the Histadrut-Mapai alliance was strangling free enterprise, obstructing new ventures.

Hot-tempered B.G. had blasted the General Zionists as a political aggregation of black-marketeers, the Orthodox bloc as fanatics, the Mapai as fellow travelers. Unless he swallowed some of his campaign oratory, his only possible partners in a new coalition would be such splinter groups as the Progressives (four seats), the pro-Mapai Arabs (five seats), the Mizrachi Religious Workers (eight seats), the Yemenites (one seat). Joined with them, B.G.'s Mapai could command a bare hold on the Parliament. In that case, Israel stood in danger of becoming, in Ben-Gurion's own phrase, "a second France without a stable government."

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