Word: israel
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...with Prime Minister Menachem Begin's government would seem to present the opposition Labor Party with a golden opportunity. Polls show that Labor would win an absolute majority of seats in the Knesset if elections were held today. Nonetheless, there is a possibility that the party, which ruled Israel from 1948 to 1977, may throw away its big chance to return to power. Reason: it is bogged down in a vindictive leadership battle that Israelis refer to simply as "the struggle...
...sparks of their personal friction, Rabin and Peres have no significant ideological or policy differences. Both advocate tough budget cutting and tight foreign currency control to fight Israel's punishing triple-digit inflation. On matters of foreign policy, both want to maintain close relations with the U.S. and honor the Camp David agreements. Rabin and Peres subscribe to the "Jordanian" option, under which most of the occupied West Bank would revert to joint Jordanian-Palestinian control...
Diplomatically, the need of Western countries for petroleum imports from Arab suppliers has strained relations with Israel and among members of the NATO alliance. A pessimistic study titled Energy and Security, which was published last week, warns that only dramatically strengthened energy security programs can protect oil-importing nations from the shocks and chaos of supply interruptions...
...charges against Abuhatzeira have renewed tensions between the country's politically and culturally dominant Ashkenazi Jews, of European background, and the Sephardic Jews, from the Middle East, the Balkans and North Africa. Abuhatzeira is from the Sephardic community, which sometimes feels it is a second-class society within Israel. Wrote Nissim Gaon, president of the World Sephardi Federation, to the Jerusalem Post: "The feeling that there are two societies, separate and unequal, has reached a psychological boiling point...
...that has brought down more powerful figures than Abuhatzeira for less serious offenses. In April 1977, for example, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was forced to resign after admitting that he and his wife had had a small but illegal U.S.-dollar bank account in Washington while he served as Israel's Ambassador...