A New Boost for the Hawks

The Yom Kippur War caught Israel in the middle of an election campaign. For nearly a month, Israel's leading politicians, including Premier Golda Meir, 75, had been stumping the country, wooing voters for the Knesset (Parliament) elections that were scheduled for Oct. 30. The war forced postponement of the voting until Dec. 31 and, for a while, reduced domestic political sniping. By last week, however, Israel's ever-voluble politicians had begun loosening their tongues again, providing a preview of the election issues. The outcome could determine how Israel will deal with its Arab neighbors in seeking peace.

The campaign should prove bitter, with hawks more hawkish than ever, doves more dovish. No one expects the voters to defeat the popular Mrs. Meir, a hawk who has constantly urged a tough stance toward the Arabs. Her Labor Party and the leftist Mapam Party, its principal ally in Israel's coalition government, should retain a majority of the Knesset's 120 seats.

Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, though, may have struck out as a potential successor to Golda Meir. Al though he very likely will retain his Cabinet post, his prestige has fallen. Israel's swift victory in the Six-Day War made Dayan a national hero. But the heavy casualties that Israel has suffered this time, plus the fact that the Arab attack took the country by surprise, have now hurt him. Uri Avneri, a longtime Dayan enemy, gleefully said last week: "The Dayan myth is dead."

At least one of Dayan's Cabinet col leagues seemed to agree. Minister of Justice Ya'acov Shimshon Shapiro, fearing the adverse impact that Dayan may have on the Labor Party's chances, last week urged Mrs. Meir to fire the general for failing to prepare the army for the attack. Dayan then offered to resign, but the Premier refused to accept his resignation. Later, the leadership of the Labor bloc censured Shapiro for suggesting that Dayan should go. "I told Moshe Dayan that he enjoys my full confidence," said Mrs. Meir, adding that "lessons to be learned concerning the beginning of the war would be discussed at the appropriate time, not now."

There are some hawks, however, who want to talk about "the beginning of the war" right now. Menahem Begin, a leader of the opposition Likud coalition in the Knesset, has denounced the government for the "grave shortcoming" of not properly deploying the army before the Egyptian and Syrian attack. He blasted as "frivolous" the government's assessment of the military situation before Yom Kippur.

Privately, some government officials concede that the Cabinet did not adequately assess the Arab buildup. In fact, the government vehemently denies the report (TIME, Oct. 22) that in the days before Yom Kippur the Premier and her Cabinet rejected a Dayan proposal to start mobilization in Israel. Insists a spokesman for Mrs. Meir: "Neither mobilization nor pre-emptive strike was discussed prior to the Arab attack. No Minister made such proposals."

Likud's frontal attack on the government's readiness for war is expected to bring it dividends at the polls--although it is too early to estimate how many seats it will add to the 32 it now holds in the Knesset. A major asset of the coalition will be General Ariel ("Arik") Sharon, an anti-Labor politician who was called up when the war started and who served with distinction in fighting against the Egyptians. When he returns to civilian life, Sharon is expected to attack Dayan's lack of preparedness and will urge Israel to consolidate its hold on the occupied territories. He and other Likud candidates will stress the strategic importance of a buffer zone to protect Israeli population centers from future surprise attacks.

Israel's doves have long opposed the kind of policies advocated by Sharon. For instance, Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir--who nonetheless voted with the hawks in the Cabinet on how to handle the war--feels that such action would foreclose the possibility of reaching any settlement with the Arabs. Some doves argue further that had Israel acted unilaterally to return most of the occupied territory to the Arabs, the recent war could probably have been averted.

In light of the high price Israel has had to pay to retain the territories, the dovish arguments have been weakened. But Sapir personally seems to have gained in prestige, partly because of his successful fund-raising campaign in the U.S. ($1 billion) and partly because the Israeli economy continued to function through the war without major dislocation. Nonetheless, he may well find it necessary to mute his dovish instincts within a post-election Cabinet that will probably be facing a bigger Likud-led hawkish opposition in the Knesset.

That could mean that if and when peace negotiations begin, Israel will take an even less flexible stance toward Arab demands than it did before the war.

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