Swing to the Right

ISRAEL Swing to the Right

As a zealot of the left, David Ben-Gurion, the shock-haired dynamo who is Premier of Israel, used to promise full-fledged socialism in Israel "in my lifetime." Each trying, hard-won year of the new republic, however, has found B-G preaching less socialism and seeking more capitalism. Last year his Mapai (Labor) Party was urged to form a stable, powerful cabinet with the free-enterprising General Zionists (Israel's No. 2 party). B-G cried "heresy." Never, said he, could his democratic, planned-economy socialists unite with such exploiters. Privately, B-G had another concern. He feared that a swing to the right might push his idealistic, youthful Mapainiks to the left and into the arms of the uncompromisingly Marxist Mapam Party.

In last month's Slansky trial in Prague, with its accent on antiSemitism, the Communists unwittingly did B-G a favor. The trial discredited the party-line Mapam, and rid B-G of any fears of desertions in that direction. He hurried into conference with the General Zionists.

Last week B-G rose in the Knesset to make an announcement: he had formed a new coalition cabinet with the General Zionists. The new government, he promised, would lift all nonessential controls, welcome foreign capital, encourage private enterprise, and even investigate charges that Socialist civil servants discriminate against free enterprise.