Israel: A Month in the Country

In most nations, when the head of state takes a holiday the people relax. But not in Israel. Bushy-haired, brittle-tempered Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion habitually uses the threat of a holiday to intimidate his opponents and bring dissident leaders of his ruling Mapai Party back into line. Last week Ben-Gurion did it again.

The spur for the leave-taking was the Lavon affair (TIME, Nov. 7), a five-year-old governmental scandal that has grown as complex and abstruse as a learned commentary on the Talmud. Polish-born Pinhas Lavon was Israel's Defense Minister until 1955, when he was forced from office for what has been mysteriously described as a "disastrous affair'' in the previous year.— Lavon loudly denied responsibility, insisted he had been framed by two of Ben-Gurion's proteges: Army Chief Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, Director General of the Defense Ministry.

The affair has since widened and proliferated to include arguments about Israel's future economic state, government decentralization and the role of Histadrut, the nation's powerful labor federation, which is now led by Lavon. Most importantly, it involves the question of who is eventually to succeed 74-year-old Ben-Gurion as Prime Minister. Lavon, who is only 56, plainly considers himself available.

Order for Affair. In October, a judicial commission investigating the tortuous Lavon affair heard a senior official admit he had arranged the forging of a letter that said Lavon gave his approval to the "disastrous" operation. The decision last week was passed on to the Cabinet. Ben-Gurion angrily insisted that Lavon, who admittedly helped plan the affair even if he did not order it into operation, should not be allowed to get off scot free and leave patriotic army officers holding the bag.

The Cabinet meeting grew stormy.

Four of the eight Mapai members defied Ben-Gurion; three others—including Moshe Dayan, one of the accused—said they would abstain. Foreign Minister Golda Meir, a potent force in Mapai, grew so angry that she wrote out her resignation, was persuaded to withdraw it, and then stalked out of the meeting. So did angry Prime Minister Ben-Gurion. By a vote of no, the remaining ministers cleared Pinhas Lavon.

Loud Whisper. The Cabinet decision brought a prompt announcement that Ben-Gurion would take a four-week holiday from his job. The Prime Minister's aides whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear that the vacation would be followed by Ben-Gurion's resignation if the Cabinet did not reverse itself. Mapai Party leaders went into a desperate huddle and promised to think of something that would pacify their chief.

Ben-Gurion's holiday gambit may work as well this time as it has in the past, with the Cabinet begging him to return.