The Lavon Affair

The tiny Republic of Israel was rocked last week by the most sensational political row in its twelve-year history. But Israelis themselves could not be sure what the row was about--or even which side was winning, because the army, on orders from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion himself, was censoring all reports about it. Day after day newspapers appeared with great chunks of white space where censors applied scissors. Officers were identified in print only by the initials of their last names. But no one could conceal the fact that a deadly power struggle had been joined, with Ben-Gurion, 74, and his favored young Cabinet ministers on one side, and on the other, the so-called "Old Zionist" elders grouped around silver-haired Pinhas Lavon, 56, secretary of the powerful Histadrut trade-union federation. Quite as obviously, the fight involved high secrets of the past as well as high offices of the future.

Road to Power. Poland-born Pinhas Lavon was Israel's Minister of Defense and touted as likely prime-ministerial material until 1955--when he was abruptly forced out of office. Ever since, he has insisted that the charges brought against him were false, but his claims were ignored. Then last August a government official, brought to court for misconduct in another matter, unexpectedly volunteered that "on orders from above," he perjured himself and forged the evidence on which Lavon was compelled to resign five years ago.

In the storm that followed, a special judicial commission delivered a secret report that is said to clear Lavon. Newspapers have managed to hint that Lavon's relations with young Army Chief Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, the whip-smart young director-general of the Defense Ministry, were terrible at the time. But Peres. 37, now B-G's Deputy Defense Minister, denies that he had any part in framing Lavon, and Dayan, 45, now Agriculture Minister and B-G's present favorite for the succession, has said nothing at all.

Road to War. Through all the fog of censorship and intrigue obscuring the Lavon affair, the one clear fact was that Lavon's resignation in February 1955 brought Ben-Gurion back from 15 months' retirement in the Negev to take Lavon's post. Shortly afterward, Ben-Gurion became Prime Minister, replacing Moderate Moshe Sharett, who was more susceptible to the argument that Israel must try to quiet the fears of its Arab neighbors if it is to live in peace with them. Eleven days after Ben-Gurion's return, the Israeli army carried out the massive reprisal raid on Gaza in which Israelis blew up the Egyptian headquarters and killed 38 Egyptians.

Egypt's President Nasser has often pointed to this blow as the event which convinced him that only if he sought arms, and quickly, could he save Egypt. Failing to get them in the West, Nasser turned to make the cotton-for-guns deal with the Russians that brought Communist influence into the Middle East. As more Israeli raids followed, young Shimon Peres flew to Paris to negotiate the alliance that armed Israel with French jets and tanks and paved the way for the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in the fall of 1956.

Whatever the motivations behind it, the Lavon affair now appears to have occurred, by curious or uncurious coincidence, at the turning point in Middle Eastern history of the past decade.

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