Israel’s Shamir Sworn In, Vows to Extend Settlements

The Israeli Parliament on Monday returned Yitzhak Shamir to the prime minister’s office, and the former underground fighter and intelligence official vowed to stress national security and to extend Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

The 71-year-old Shamir, a political hard-liner who was prime minister in 1983-84, returns this time as head of a national unity government that he promised will “make the unity of the nation its chief concern.”

Shamir, head of the rightist Likud Bloc, is to exchange offices and official residences today with his predecessor, Shimon Peres, the centrist Labor Alignment leader who headed the coalition for the first half of the 50 months it is scheduled to last.

Exchange of Cars

The two exchanged cars Monday after a brief swearing-in ceremony at the official residence of President Chaim Herzog.

Shamir delivered a policy speech to the Knesset (Parliament) before it voted to approve the government he had proposed. He promised to “refrain from divisiveness and extremism,” but he underlined two potentially disruptive areas of disagreement between himself and Peres, who takes over as foreign minister and alternate prime minister.

Shamir called for “settlement throughout the Land of Israel,” a term that includes the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip, territories Israel occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. And he emphasized that “no international forum can serve as a substitute for direct negotiations” in the search for peace with Jordan.

Focus on Negev, Galilee

Peres had said in a speech to the Knesset 10 days ago that new settlement activity should be concentrated in the sparsely populated southern Negev Desert and in the northern Galilee region rather than in the occupied territories.

Peres also emphasized the need for direct negotiations, but he has already agreed in principle to some form of international “umbrella” over peace talks with Jordan as a concession to King Hussein.

Either issue could prove to be the straw that breaks the unusual Likud-Labor coalition, which many people did not expect to last as long as it has. It was born out of the inconclusive parliamentary elections of July, 1984, which left both major parties short of the majority needed to form a government.

Shamir served as prime minister for 11 months before the 1984 elections, having replaced Menachem Begin after Begin’s sudden retirement in October, 1983. Shamir came late to politics. Before independence, in 1948, he headed the operational arm of the so-called Stern Gang, a radical underground group, and later served in the Mossad, the foreign intelligence service.

Ben-Gurion’s Footsteps

In returning to the prime minister’s officer, Shamir follows in the footsteps of Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, who served as the country’s first prime minister, from 1948 through 1953, and again from late 1955 until mid-1963.

The 25-member Cabinet that Shamir presented Monday was the same as the one Peres had nominated 25 months ago, with two exceptions.

Shoshana Arbeli-Almozlino becomes minister of health, the first woman minister since the late Golda Meir resigned as prime minister in 1974. Arbeli-Almozlino succeeds Labor’s Mordechai Gur, who resigned in protest over Shamir’s alleged role in a scandal involving the beating deaths of two Palestinian prisoners while in the custody of the Shin Bet, the security police, in 1984, during Shamir’s previous term as prime minister.

Zevulun Hammer becomes minister of religious affairs, succeeding Yosef Burg, who retired earlier this month after serving in every Israeli Cabinet for the last 35 years.

Forced Out by Peres

Other differences involve only changes in responsibility--most importantly the switch between Shamir and Peres. Also, Yitzhak Modai, the controversial Likud official who was forced out by Peres after holding both the finance and justice portfolios, returns to the Cabinet as a minister without portfolio.

The 120-member Knesset approved the new Cabinet by a vote of 82 to 17, with three members abstaining and 18 absent.

Peres, 63, accomplished what many here consider a minor economic miracle by slashing the country’s inflation rate from about 1% a day to a little over 1% a month. Early in his term the government pulled most of its troops out of Lebanon, ending an unpopular occupation that began with Israel’s invasion in June, 1982.

As a result, Peres, who suffered from what some analysts here have called a “Tricky Shimon” image before becoming prime minister, left office with one of the highest public approval ratings of any prime minister in Israeli history.

‘No Better Blessing’

As the mass-circulation newspaper Yediot Aharonot put it in wishing Shamir luck: “There can be no better blessing than this--may his two years as leader be at least as good as the two years that have just gone by under Shimon Peres.”

Shamir referred in his policy speech Monday to the “not inconsiderable achievements” of the national unity government under Peres, and he publicly thanked his predecessor for “the understanding and cooperation he accorded me during the two years.”