The eighth convention of the rightwing Herut Party ended here yesterday with an outward show of unity despite an apparent impasse in the party’s internal affairs and the reaffirmation by Menachem Beigin over the weekend of his decision to resign as leader of the party.
The 612 convention delegates charged the new 107-member central committee with reconvening the convention later this year to elect a party chairman. In the final balloting, the delegates rose to their feet to demonstrate their support of an appeal to Mr. Beigin to withdraw his resignation from the chairmanship and decided to hold the post vacant temporarily.
The former leadership of the party and the opposition bloc agreed to constitute a new central committee with each side providing 46 members and the 15 Herut members of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, also coopted to serve on the committee. The resignation of Mr. Beigin leaves Knesset Deputy Speaker Aryeh Ben-Eliezer as the dominant figure in the incumbent national leadership but his candidacy for the chairmanship of the national executive is being challenged by Shmuel Tamir, the Israeli attorney who heads the internal opposition group.
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