Rafi (Political Party)

Rafi combined a breakaway from Mapai’s leadership with a program emphasizing electoral reform, defense self-reliance, public services, and scientific modernization.[1] Its emergence reflected both Ben-Gurion’s conflict with his successor, Levi Eshkol, over the Lavon Affair and a leadership struggle involving younger figures such as Dayan and Peres and party veterans led by Eshkol and Golda Meir.[1]

Rafi won ten seats in the 1965 election and remained in opposition, while Eshkol’s Alignment won 45 seats.[3] Its subsequent participation in the national unity government and the Labor Party merger brought most of its members back into partnership with the political movement from which they had broken away.[1][2]

Ben-Gurion resigned as prime minister on June 16, 1963, and Eshkol succeeded him; tensions subsequently intensified over Ben-Gurion’s influence on political-security decisions, the Lavon Affair, and Eshkol’s security policy.[4] Ben-Gurion’s criticism became sharply personal: he said of Eshkol, “The best thing he can do for the state is to leave his position as soon as possible.”[4]

The Lavon Affair originated in a July 1954 operation in Egypt carried out by Unit 131 of Israeli military intelligence, intended to undermine relations among Egypt, Britain, and the United States.[5] Its exposure led to a prolonged political struggle involving Ben-Gurion and Pinchas Lavon, against the background of divisions between Mapai’s older leadership and Ben-Gurion’s protégés, including Peres and Dayan.[5] The question of reopening the affair became a central issue in the conflict that preceded Rafi’s formation.[1]

At Mapai’s convention on February 17, 1965, Ben-Gurion demanded a new judicial inquiry into the affair, while Eshkol and other party leaders opposed reopening it.[6] The convention voted by 1,226 to 848 to remove the matter from its agenda, and Eshkol also prevailed on the proposed electoral alignment with Ahdut Ha’Avoda.[6] Ben-Gurion’s supporters opposed that alignment and, after their convention defeat, proposed replacing Eshkol with Ben-Gurion as prime minister.[1]

Other disagreements widened the breach, including Eshkol’s cooperation with President Lyndon Johnson concerning the Dimona nuclear facility and the government’s decision to rebury Ze’ev Jabotinsky in Jerusalem.[7] In June 1965, Ben-Gurion called at a supporters’ meeting for “purges” within Mapai because of “insecurity and deception” and “distortion of judgment.”[5] During the conflict, he wrote in his diary that the party “no longer exists” as a place of comradeship, free discussion, or willingness to hear members’ opinions.[4]

Ben-Gurion established Rafi in the summer of 1965; in July, seven Mapai Knesset members formed its parliamentary group, with Dayan joining later.[1][5] Its ranks included Peres, Teddy Kollek, Yitzhak Navon, Chaim Herzog, Yosef-Aharon Almogi, and Yizhar Smilansky, as well as Ben-Gurion and Dayan.[8] Peres became the party’s secretary-general.[8]

Rafi received 12 percent of the vote in the September 1965 Histadrut elections.[1] In the November election to the Sixth Knesset, it received 95,328 votes, or 7.9 percent of the total, and won ten seats.[9] Eshkol’s Alignment won 45 seats, Gahal won 26, and Mapam won eight; Rafi remained in opposition.[3] Its parliamentary activity concentrated particularly on defense and foreign affairs, and it sometimes cooperated with Gahal.[1]

At its founding convention in May 1966, representing 23,000 members, Rafi called for electoral reform, greater self-reliance in defense, national health insurance, free secondary education, and economic modernization emphasizing science.[1] These proposals accompanied a campaign image presenting the party as a modern, younger alternative to Eshkol.[10]

A 1965 campaign poster featured an atom model and the slogan “A new era, new initiative, new people, new thoughts.”[10] Peres also promised “A car for every worker” at a time when a car was regarded as an ultimate luxury; he later explained that the slogan was intended to emphasize Israel’s approach to a technological revolution.[11]

Nathan Yanai identifies a plank in Rafi’s 1965 platform supporting a state system of public health insurance, even at the expense of the Histadrut’s Kupat Holim system.[12] In his analysis, Ben-Gurion had not pressed this reform while in power, while Histadrut leaders feared that losing Kupat Holim would weaken their organization’s influence and dominant position in the labor movement.[12]

In May 1967, as war appeared increasingly likely and discussion focused on appointing Dayan defense minister, Rafi offered to return to Mapai bodies.[1] Dayan initially rejected Eshkol’s offer of a Cabinet position without portfolio as an “ineffective appointment” and pressed for a more substantial security role.[2] Rafi, Gahal, and the National Religious Party subsequently proposed him for defense minister.[2]

In late May 1967, political pressure grew to broaden Eshkol’s coalition as tensions with Egypt escalated.[2] Dayan initially rejected an offer to enter the Cabinet without portfolio and pressed for a more significant security position.[2] On May 29, Rafi, Gahal, and the National Religious Party proposed him for defense minister; after three days of debate, Eshkol agreed to relinquish the defense portfolio.[2]

Rafi’s entry helped form Israel’s first national unity government on the eve of the Six-Day War.[2] The coalition was enlarged even though Eshkol’s existing government already commanded 75 of the Knesset’s 120 seats.[13] Rafi thus moved from parliamentary opposition into a government led by the same prime minister whose leadership Ben-Gurion had challenged.[1][2]

Peres broke with Ben-Gurion in 1967 and played a central role in bringing Rafi and Mapai together.[14] Dayan and Peres subsequently led most Rafi members into the Labor Party, while Ben-Gurion opposed the move and remained with a smaller group of loyalists.[8]

On January 21, 1968, Mapai, Ahdut Ha’Avoda, and Rafi joined in establishing the Labor Party, with Golda Meir agreeing to chair the foundation conference.[15] Rafi received 21.5 percent of the places on the new party’s governing bodies.[1] Ben-Gurion did not join the new party.[15]

The State List that followed was distinct from Rafi, although it consisted mainly of former Rafi supporters.[1] Ben-Gurion led that group into the 1969 election under the name “Rafi–The State List,” and it won four seats.[8][16]

Rafi’s ten Knesset seats gave the breakaway a parliamentary presence, but the result left it well behind the Alignment, which won 45 seats.[3] Its brief separate existence nevertheless encompassed the recruitment of prominent political figures, participation in the national unity government, and a substantial allocation of positions in the Labor Party’s governing bodies.[1][8]

The party’s program linked political reform with state provision of health insurance and secondary education, defense self-reliance, and science-led economic modernization.[1] Its merger also separated Ben-Gurion from most of the colleagues who had followed him out of Mapai: Dayan and Peres supported joining Labor, while Ben-Gurion continued independently with his remaining followers.[8] The distinction between the merged Rafi membership and the later State List is therefore central to the party’s organizational legacy.[1]

The Lavon Affair involved disputes over responsibility for the 1954 operation and over how those questions should be investigated; it was not simply a disagreement over electoral strategy.[5][12] The affair became entwined with a broader factional struggle between Mapai’s older leadership and Ben-Gurion’s protégés, including Peres and Dayan.[5] Nathan Yanai argues that the final 1964–65 crisis was resolved through party councils and the Knesset election while leaving questions for historical research.[12]

A reported episode from the 1967 crisis concerns Peres’s proposal that a General Staff reconnaissance unit place a nuclear device on a mountain in Sinai to deter Egypt.[4] The proposal was conveyed to fellow Rafi member Dayan and rejected; the historical account gives uncertainty about Egyptian and superpower reactions as an apparent consideration rather than an established explanation.[4] This was a reported proposal by a party member, not an adopted Rafi platform commitment.[1][4]