A HAPPY
AND JOYOUS
W t "'cm,' CHANUKAH

To All Our Friends,
Families & Clients

News

VIEWPOINT page 17

fails, to the High Court
itself. The problem with this
procedure, in the eyes of suc-
cessive Israeli governments,
is that it takes time. And
time was precisely what the
Rabin government felt it
could not afford to lose in in-
flicting punishment on the
Hamas and Islamic Jihad
after a wave of terrorism
that took the lives of six
Israeli soldiers and
policemen in a single week.
The result was a drama in
two acts. First an internal
legal battle, then a deteri-
oration on the ground —
both in the territories and in
south Lebanon — that turn-
ed the affair, at least in the
short-run, into a strategic
and certainly a public-
relations disaster for the
Rabin government.
The legal saga, though less
tailored for television, is
perhaps the more inter-
esting drama of the two. For
in the confrontation between
the stance that Israel is at
war and must do everything
it can to defend itself, and

the conflicting position that
even the most heinous
criminal has the right to due
process, the Israeli govern-
ment was clearly committed
to the former.

It convinced itself that
nothing took priority over
stamping out the scourge • of
Hamas, forthwith. If that
meant bending the rules, so
be it. To circumvent the
High Court — the guardian
of the rules — it applied•
military censorship to sup-
press word of the deportation
until it was nearly a fait ac-
compli.

As the condemnations of
Israel mounted, the govern-
ment hunkered down, hop-
ing its confrontation with
the world will pass, and that
the path to peace will
reopen. Meanwhile, in
Israel's internal political
world, Mr. Rabin's decision
to deport Hamas and Islamic
Jihad activists still looked
like the most successful
move he's made since taking
office. El

Meretz Vows
To Leave Coalition

World Wide Financial Thanks Metropolitan
Detroit's Jewish Community For Helping
Us Make Mortgage Banking History!

THE DETRO IT JEWISH NEWS

WORLD WIDE FINANCIAL

18

Southeast Michigan's Leader
In Mortgage Lending

647.1199

1533 North Woodward, Suite 140
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan 48304

Jerusalem (JTA) — Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin is
facing a choice of tilting his
Labor-led government to the
right or holding on to his
left-wing coalition partner,
the Meretz bloc, in the wake
of the expulsion last week of
415 Muslim fundamenta-
lists.
So far, Mr. Rabin has
given no indication of
whether he will take up the
offer of the right-wing
Tsomet party and the Na-
tional Religious Party to join
the government in the face
of a threat by Meretz to
leave if he does so.
But his scheduled meeting
Monday with Tsomet leader
Rafael Eitan comes against
a background of months of
unsuccessful efforts to bring
that party into the coalition
and thereby broaden his
narrow majority of 62 in the
120-member Knesset.
Meretz holds 12 Knesset
seats, while Tsomet and the
NRP command eight and
six, respectively.
Mr. Eitan, a former army
chief of staff who served in
the previous Likud ad-
ministration, told reporters
he heartily approves of the
expulsion decision and is
now ready to join the
Cabinet.
But the three Meretz min-
isters and the chairman of

its parliamentary caucus,
Yossi Sarid, informed Mr.
Rabin that if the two right:-
wing parties join the coali-
tion, Meretz will immedi-
ately secede.
Sources said Mr. Eitan will
seek assurances of continued
government assistance to
West Bank Jewish set-.
tlements situated within the
parameters of the Allon
Plan. Under that plan,
which was laid out after the
1967 Six-Day War by the
late Yigal Allon, Israel
would continue to control
areas along the Jordan River*
and strategic heights in
Judea and Samaria.
Most of these are what the
Rabin government has
called "security set-
tlements," as opposed to
those set up primarily for po- •
litical reasons.
A National Religious Par-
ty politician also linked the
settlement issue with mem-
bership in the government.
Yigal Bibi, chairman of
the NRP parliamentary.
caucus, said a decision by
Rabin to include Jewish set-
tlements of Gush Etzion, a
region near Bethlehem, in
the "Priority A" category for
government support was "a
favorable signal" to the
NRP.
Both Tsomet and the NRP
deferred motions of no con-

