The Crisis That Became a Revolution

"Five years are enough. I have come to the end of the road. It is beyond my strength to continue carrying the burden."

With those emotional words--spoken to a meeting in Jerusalem of the leaders of Israel's ruling Labor Party --Premier Golda Meir, 75, abruptly ended almost a half-century career in politics. In bowing out "irrevocably" from the post she has held for five years and through two Middle East wars, Mrs. Meir threw Israel into its worst political crisis in years. Her resignation as the country's fourth Premier since independence* cast a shadow on the prospects for early disengagement negotiations with Syria and the likelihood of a peace settlement in the Middle East.

Mrs. Meir followed her announcement to the party with a formal resignation speech before the Knesset. The modernistic chamber was filled to capacity as she trudged to the podium. The mood of the meeting was even more grim than expected: that morning, Palestinian guerrillas had sneaked across Israel's border from Lebanon to carry out a massacre at Qiryat Shemona in which 18 people were killed (see following story). The raid, Mrs. Meir said, "surpasses in its barbarity all that has gone before." She followed up an account of the assault with an explanation of her decision to resign. In a brief, stiff and somewhat bitter speech, she acknowledged "a ferment that cannot be ignored" in Israeli politics and society. Her resignation, she said, would give Israel's voters "an opportunity to reconsider and arrive at a fresh decision in regard to the establishment of a new and stable government."

The Premier submitted her resignation, and by extension that of her entire Cabinet, to President Ephraim Katzir. Many Israelis found it hard to believe that their stolid, iron-willed Premier was actually quitting.

They have taken a fierce pride in their Golda--an earthy, archetypal Jewish mother who wears baggy suits and sensible oxfords and puffs away on an ever-present cigarette.

Although she has lived in Palestine and Israel for more than 53 years, Mrs. Meir still speaks Hebrew with a distinctive Middle American accent. She was born Goldie Mabovitch in Kiev--her earliest memories, she told Pope Paul at the Vatican, were of pogroms--and immigrated to the U.S. at eight with her family. In Milwaukee, her home for nearly 15 years, she became Goldie Myerson.

She moved to Palestine in 1921 to join the Zionist movement there. Eventually, David Ben-Gurion persuaded her to Hebraize her name to Meir, which means "illumination." She bore a son and a daughter to her husband Morris, a lukewarm Zionist from whom she was later separated (he has since died). Mrs. Meir preferred politics to housekeeping and joined the Histadrut, the Jewish Labor Federation. Her rise after that in the government and Labor Party was swift.

An Embassy Kibbutz. During the 1948 Middle East war, she raised millions in the U.S. for Israeli weapons purchases. That year she was also named Israel's first minister to Moscow. Golda ran her embassy like a kibbutz, taking her turn at washing dishes. For a decade she was Foreign Minister under Ben-Gurion, with whom she often fought, and then under her friend Levi Eshkol. Ben-Gurion, despite their arguments, once complimented her as "the only man in the Cabinet."

After Eshkol's death in 1969, she had to be persuaded by party members to succeed him as Premier. In that post, she opened the way for immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel, forged ties of friendship and aid with Jews round the world, and strengthened Israel's relationship with the U.S., its principal ally and armorer. But she took comparatively little interest in domestic affairs and often failed to detect unrest at home. Oriental Jews in particular complained of their treatment as second-class citizens in Israel. When young Sephardic Jews organized themselves as "Black Panthers" three years ago and demonstrated in Jerusalem, Mrs. Meir was both amazed and outraged.

Playing Favorites. For most of her career as Premier, Mrs. Meir was the unquestioned leader of Israel. She ran the party and the country in stern maternal fashion. She made no excuses for playing favorites--Defense Minister Moshe Dayan became one--or for bearing grudges. Gradually, however, the Labor Party began to lose strength. In the latest general elections, which had to be postponed to December because of the October war, Labor won--but with a reduced representation in the Knesset. Mrs. Meir was forced to bargain earnestly with Religious Party and Liberal Party leaders in order to form a governing coalition. In February she had to threaten resignation to keep the warring factions of her own party in line. Meanwhile, the right-wing opposition--led by onetime Irgun Terrorist Menachem Begin--banded together in a menacing bloc known as Likud (union).

Mrs. Meir's coalition majority in the Knesset, as a result, was so slim (only 68 seats out of 129) that many Israelis freely predicted a new general election would soon have to be called. The test of her survival came in the shape of a commission that investigated Israel's lack of preparedness for the October war (TIME, April 15). Two weeks ago, the commission, chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice Shimon Agranat, issued a report sharply criticizing Israel's military leadership; Lieut. General David Elazar, the chief of staff, and five other high-ranking officers were forced to resign. But the Agranat Commission cleared Israel's civilian leaders, including Dayan and Mrs. Meir, thereby raising a storm of protest.

Even before the report was issued, Dayan had been under attack by a covey of critics that included disgruntled veterans, Israeli doves and even members of his own Labor Party faction, who questioned his leadership. The commission's apparent whitewash of Dayan stirred fresh and damning attacks on the Defense Minister from within the government, principally from a left-wing Labor faction led by Deputy Premier Yigal Allon. Allon's supporters and the far-left Mapam faction threatened to bring down the government by voting against it if Dayan was not removed. Dayan's own Rafi faction warned that if he was ousted, it would also vote against the government.

The Likud last week successfully demanded a special session of the Knesset in order to present a no-confidence motion. Twice before, under similar attacks, Dayan had gone to Mrs. Meir and offered to resign. Both times she refused. Last week, when he made the same gesture, she was ominously noncommittal. Chatting with Mrs. Meir at a Labor meeting, Haifa Mayor Yosef Almogi commented: "You realize that it won't end with Dayan. They're really aiming at you." Replied the Premier caustically: "You're telling me?"

Dayan, who until last week nurtured hopes of becoming Premier himself one day, refused to resign. That left Mrs. Meir with two choices: to beat back the Likud no-confidence vote or to resign herself. Realizing that she was likely to lose a Knesset vote, she opted to replace the debate on her government's performance with a speech of resignation. "I only regret," she told party leaders before her Knesset appearance, "that I have to bring down the government with me." She will head a caretaker government until a new Premier is installed or another election is called.

The Dayan dilemma, Mrs. Meir later confided to intimates, gave her an excuse to quit a job that she never wanted in the first place. "Even had Dayan told me that he was quitting, I would have resigned," she insisted. Indeed, even if the Dayan issue had never arisen, Mrs. Meir would likely have been pressured out of a post that she perhaps had held too long.

Terrible Cost. The Labor Party, entrenched in power because of Israel's system of proportional representation, has grown old in office and increasingly unresponsive. The October war, which ended for Israel without a clear victory for the first time and at a terrible cost of 2,600 dead, was a national trauma. Since the war, according to polls, dissatisfaction with the government has risen to an astounding 67% of voters interviewed. Mrs. Meir's popularity plummeted from 65% before the war to 21% in February.

One reason for voter anger is the economic consequences of the war. Intraducing a new budget last month, Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir put the overall cost of the 18-day battle at more than $7 billion, or roughly $2,000 for each of Israel's 3,350,000 men, women and children. Sapir warned that 54% of Israel's gross national product would have to be funneled back to the treasury to cover the deficits. He also announced that government subsidies on bread, butter, rice and milk would be eliminated to help recoup. Israelis, already the world's most heavily taxed people, have found their food costs rising as much as 70% as a result, while bus rides cost 50% more. Meanwhile, services have deteriorated, and factories are undermanned because so many reservists are still on active military service.

End of the Giants. Labor's other image problem is that its leadership is somewhat venerable. Sapir, who is the Labor Party's political boss and kingmaker as well as Finance Minister, set out last week to find a successor to Mrs. Meir in order to forestall an election, in which, he fears, Labor would lose more seats. His choices were limited. Sapir could have the job himself if he wanted it, but he is 65 and has a history of circulatory problems. Other possible candidates are Foreign Minister Abba Eban, 59, Haifa Mayor Almogi, 64, and Justice Minister Haim Zadok, 60, all longtime party stalwarts. Probably the most exciting potential candidate is Minister of Labor Yitzhak Rabin, 52, who was chief of staff during the Six-Day War and later Ambassador to Washington. Polls indicate that Rabin is one of Israel's most popular politicians, but his muscle inside party councils is slight.

Even if Sapir manages to stitch a government together, Israeli political observers expect it to last no longer than the end of the year. As Sapir admitted last week to TIME's David Halevy, "This is not only a government crisis. This is a revolution." Golda's going heralds the end of power, at long last, for the generation of founding fathers--and mothers --that Israelis refer to as "the giants." A new generation is ready to emerge, with a different outlook, particularly toward Israel's Arab neighbors. Even the Arabs, watching the discomfort of an old enemy with delight, appear to believe that this is about to happen. The Egyptian newspaper al Gumhouriya, in a lead editorial last week, described the events in Jerusalem as "the end of Israel's old guard" and looked for a new generation of political leaders "that can comprehend and interact with the realities added to the political scene by the October war."

* Her predecessors: David Ben-Gurion (1948-53, 1955-63): Moshe Sharett (1953-55): Levi Eshkol (1963-69).

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