Labor accepts inclusion of ultra-nationalist in Israeli government

During an impassioned debate on the issue, which threatens to tear apart the country's oldest liberal party, members of Labor's central committee exchanged insults and even fisticuffs at one point during the proceedings in a Tel Aviv Hotel.

In the end Labor agreed to the admission of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party of Avigdor Lieberman into the ruling coalition, a move supported by Defense Minister Amir Peretz, the Labor party chief.

"We have to be responsible towards Israel and stay in the government," Peretz told the approximately 2,000 members of the Labor Party central committee in attendance. "I want to stay in the coalition in order not to allow Lieberman's extreme views to become a reality."

Other top party leaders, including six Labor lawmakers and one cabinet minister, joined Labor's younger cadres in voting against the measure. They called for the party to reject a partnership with the controversial Lieberman and quit the governing coalition.

"The Labor Party should stop Lieberman," Dani Yatom, a Labor lawmaker and former head of Israel's Mossad spy agency, told those assembled. Yatom denounced Lieberman's "racist party that calls for the transfer of Israel's Arabs."

Lieberman's inclusion still has to be approved by votes in the cabinet and parliament, which are expected later this week.

Faced with plummeting ratings after the Lebanon war, Olmert moved to shore up his shaky 67-member coalition in the 120-seat parliament last week by reaching out to Lieberman. The inclusion of Yisrael Beitenu would give the government a comfortable 78 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.

But the move has wreaked havoc on Labor because many of Lieberman's views are anathema to the main liberal party in Israel since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948.

Lieberman, the rising star of Israel's right, has called for the transfer of land and populations to create homogenous Jewish and Palestinian states, and for the execution of Israeli Arab MPs who have had dealings with the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement, which Israel considers to be a terrorist organization.

Peretz agreed to Lieberman coming into the government after Olmert assured him that his administration's policies would not change with the inclusion of the firebrand.

He assured Labor supporters on Sunday that Lieberman's joining the government would not harm the Mideast peace process.

Labor has 19 seats in the Knesset, and its departure from the coalition would probably have brought down the government.

Peretz supporters argued that the party must remain to spare the country another election which could be won by right-wing parties, and in order to continue to have a say in national policies.

"Leaving the government is tantamount to suicide," Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer was quoted as saying over the weekend. "If the Labor party leaves the government it will disappear."

But opponents of the measure, led by Culture Minister Ophir Pines-Paz, argued that remaining in a coalition with Lieberman would be "a violation of the party's commitment to its electorate," according to the draft proposal circulated during Sunday's meeting.

By joining a governing partnership with Lieberman, Peretz and his allies run the risk of alienating Israeli Arabs, a constituency that Labor usually courts and which detests Lieberman.

Israeli Arab members of Labor's central committee opposed the measure and several Israeli Arab MPs last week called for an international boycott should Lieberman enter the government.

Under the agreement struck with Olmert, Lieberman will coordinate the Jewish state's efforts to counter arch-foe Iran's nuclear program as minister for strategic affairs -- a move ridiculed by senior Labor members.

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