Peres to Ask Labor Group to OK Likud-Led Coalition

JERUSALEM —  Labor Party leader Shimon Peres agreed Tuesday to ask the left-center party’s central committee to approve joining a coalition government headed by the rightist Likud Party.

After a breakfast meeting with Israeli President Chaim Herzog, Peres, who is foreign minister in the current government, said he will put forward the proposal Thursday, when the 1,300-member central committee meets.

Last week, younger members of Labor’s 110-member executive bureau turned down a previous request from Peres and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin that Labor form a broad-based coalition with Likud, headed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. The central committee could overrule the bureau’s decision.

Herzog has called on the two major parties to join together for the sake of national unity and to dilute the effect of several minor religious parties, which hold the balance of power after inconclusive national elections on Nov. 1.

These parties are insisting that any government they join must amend the so-called Law of Return, which guarantees all Jews Israeli citizenship on arrival, in such a way as to recognize only those converted to Judaism by Orthodox rabbis.

Most Jews in the United States belong to Reform or Conservative congregations and are deeply offended by the suggestion that their form of worship is inferior to the Orthodox branch, which dominates the Israeli religious parties.

“The president explained what he sees as a very serious situation that is very difficult for the state and said we must enlist all forces to form a broad government,” Peres said.

He added: “I was very impressed by the president’s remarks. I informed him that I will suggest convening the party’s central committee this week, and I will recommend they heed the president’s request.”

Likud won 40 seats and Labor 39 in the election. Sixty-one seats are needed for a majority in the 120-member Knesset.

In other developments, unrest continued in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Palestinian leaders called a general commercial strike to protest conditions at the Ketziot prison camp in the Negev Desert.

An estimated 2,500 Palestinians are being held there, including some 1,500 who have not had charges filed against them. Many of the prisoners reportedly have gone on a hunger strike to protest what they say are inhumane conditions.

During the day, eight Palestinians--including a 5-year-old boy--were reported wounded by shots fired by Israeli soldiers during demonstrations supporting the strike. An Israeli soldier was injured by a rock thrown at his car near Bethlehem.

In the northern seaport of Acre, Arab residents heatedly protested a plan announced Monday by Deputy Mayor David Bar Lev to move Arabs out of the city center in order to maintain its Jewishness. Bar Lev said the Israeli government should transfer the city’s 12,000 Arabs to new houses outside Acre in order to accommodate the city’s 20,000 Jews.

In Jerusalem, police said Tuesday that they had arrested 13 Bedouin Arabs, two of them Israeli soldiers, in connection with a hand grenade assault that wounded 25 people at a pedestrian mall in Haifa on Aug. 20.

Police said the 13 operated on behalf of the mainline Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The 13, who are suspected in several other attacks against Israeli civilians, were arrested two weeks ago, police said.