Word: premiership
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...effect, the premiership was hers for the asking, but she delayed her decision until at least after Eshkol's funeral. Now 70, she is in less than robust health. "The people of Israel," editorialized the daily Ha'aretz, "have the right to expect that the helm be given to a younger person, whose power of action will not be restricted by age or health." That widely held feeling would not ultimately affect the choice. With the disciplined ranks of the labor party behind the leadership's choice, the decision, as Mrs. Meir once put it, "will...
...Meir's supporters want her to take the interim premiership to head off a showdown between two younger contenders, whose rivalry might otherwise divide the government and country between now and October. They are Allon, 50, the favorite of the party establishment, and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, 53, whose immense popularity with the grass roots is not shared by the party brass. Something of a lone wolf, Dayan is not one either to seek or accept advice, and is considered unpredictable and undisciplined by the staunch conservatives of the Labor Party machine. A pragmatist who operates largely on intuition...
Last week Dayan let it be known that he would support Mrs. Meir for the premiership but would oppose any other candidate, whether Allon or such dark-horse possibilities as Secretary-General of the Labor Party Pinhas Sapir or Foreign Minister Abba Eban. The decision was prudent on Dayan's part, since he would stand little chance of winning a party fight with Mrs. Meir...
Nonetheless, Dayan's patience might well give Allon a substantial lead. As Premier, Mrs. Meir could be expected to advance the fortunes of Allon, her own favorite for the permanent premiership. In other matters, she would likely govern, as did Eshkol, by consensus politics, and make virtually no change in Israel's policies toward the Arabs. She had still to give her final decision at week's end, but after a lifetime in Israeli politics, she could be only too well aware that a "no" would open the way to a damaging intraparty dispute at a time...
JUST as David Ben-Gurion has been compared to a modern Moses who led his people to the Promised Land, so Levi Eshkol made a credible Joshua as Ben-Gurion's successor in the premiership of Israel. Chosen in 1963 for what many believed to be a transitional tenure, Eshkol presided over the defeat of Israel's enemies and its coming of age as an industrial state. When he died last week at 73, he left behind a government more unified than at any time in Israel's 21-year history, and one that rules over...