Peres Rebuffs Rabin Bid for Top Labor Post

Dovish politician Shimon Peres, who in the spring failed at a run for prime minister, displayed his powers of political survival Sunday by turning back a leadership challenge from Yitzhak Rabin, a bitter rival in his own Labor Party.

The party’s 1,300-member Central Committee rejected a proposal by Rabin to convene a nominating convention next week so he could challenge Peres for the job of chairman and become the party’s next candidate for prime minister.

The meeting was put off until next year, leaving Peres in control. The procedural vote was viewed as a barometer of the candidates’ popularity in the party at large. Peres’ supporters were elated. “Shimon, Shimon!” they yelled as he took congratulatory handshakes and kisses.

Although Peres and Rabin agree on key political issues--they both favor Israeli participation in American-designed peace talks with Palestinians--they are longtime personal rivals. In the aftermath of the vote, Peres pledged a kind of cold peace.

“I did not initiate this,” Peres said. “I will continue to behave as before (toward Rabin).”

The vote means that Peres will not only lead Labor in opposition to the rightist government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, but should the present government fall, Peres would be in a position to try to form a substitute coalition. If Shamir’s government survives, Peres would at least have time, as scheduled 1992 elections approach, to smooth over criticism in the party over his own leadership.

Peres was under fire for pulling Labor out of a unity government headed by Shamir and then falling short of enough parliamentary support for his own Labor-led coalition. The botched effort threw Labor into early opposition and opened the way for Rabin, who was defense minister in the unity government, to make his challenge.

However, Peres is an untiring grass-roots campaigner, analysts point out, whereas Rabin is aloof. The difference showed in the vote; Peres won by a margin of 54% to 46%. “Peres knows everybody by name. He has staying power,” said political analyst Shlomo Avineri.

Peres, 66, has led the party since 1977, and in the early 1980s, he served as prime minister for two years in a unity government with Likud. He was finance minister in the government that collapsed last spring.

During the past month, top party officials were turning their backs on Peres, so his victory Sunday surprised many observers. Peres has been unable to lead Labor to outright power in four straight national elections. Recent polls showed that while Rabin could beat Shamir in a head-to-head vote, Peres could not.

“Maybe Peres’ loser image might erode a little,” said analyst Avineri.

Officials of Shamir’s Likud Party were reported to be pleased at the outcome. Some had feared that the Labor Party, under Rabin’s leadership, might be able to attract defectors from today’s governing but precarious Likud-led coalition of right-wing and religious parties. Rabin’s appeal dates from his tough policies, as defense minister, in suppressing the Palestinian uprising, experts say.

“Once again, Labor has done its best to help Likud,” quipped government spokesman Yossi Olmert. “Likud thinks that with Peres, it is safe in power.”

Likud opposes talks with Palestinians under a Washington-designed plan that would give an indirect role to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Israeli observers are doubtful that victory for either Peres or Rabin would do much to resolve Labor’s deep-seated problems. The party suffers from organizational flaws that have resisted repair, even in the face of repeated failures at the polls. Few young faces of prominence can be found in the ranks of future Labor Party leaders.

Meanwhile, the continued dominance of Peres and Rabin, who is 68, has begun to wear thin, newspaper columnists said.

“The showdowns come back to us like a stubborn fly that returns and lands on one’s nose,” wrote Nahum Barnea in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. “The showdowns in the party are always similar--the same basic plot, same heroes, same radical expressions of mutual hatred and violence--only the audience is getting smaller.”

Peres, in a speech to the Central Committee, referred to the need for new blood. “Our next mission is not to return to the gladiators’ arena. The party needs a young leadership. Your duty, my duty, everybody’s duty is to give sufficient time that such a leadership will arise.”

He stopped short of saying that he would decline to lead the party in 1992, although he pleaded with Rabin to drop his challenge.

To charges that he alone is responsible for the botched effort to unseat Shamir, Peres responded, “If there was a failure, Rabin is co-responsible, step after step, in this whole failure.”