The Infighter

Whether Israel's opposition Labor Party succeeds in recapturing power from Menachem Begin's Likud government depends very much on the performance in the next seven weeks of a low-keyed and surprisingly mild-mannered veteran political infighter: Shimon Peres, 57, a longtime political organizer who has been at the heart of the Labor organization for 30 years. Only five months ago, Peres defended his leadership against a challenge by former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, with whom he had feuded bitterly--and publicly--for years. Since then he has spent almost all of his energies trying to repair the resulting damage to party unity and bring its unruly factions under control in time for the election. Peres in some ways seemed at a disadvantage for the formidable task of forging party unity, however, because he is seen by many Israelis as a man of changing loyalties and imprecise convictions.

Born in Poland and raised on a kibbutz, he was appointed director general of the Defense Ministry at age 29 by his political mentor, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. For the next 13 years, Peres played a major role in organizing Israel's defense forces, building up its formidable arms and aircraft technology and launching its nuclear research program. Today Israel is generally considered to be a nuclear military power.

During those years, however, Peres also made some powerful enemies, whose vindictive animosity has plagued his political career. His arms-buying forays in Europe often edged into diplomacy, irritating then Foreign Minister Golda Meir. As a Knesset member in 1965, Peres helped to found the Rafi faction of Ben-Gurion loyalists that defected from the Labor Party for three years.

The depth and bitterness of the personal and professional rivalry between Peres and Rabin came out in the open in 1974, when Peres challenged Rabin for the job of party chairman after Golda Meir's retirement. Peres lost narrowly, and I though Rabin was forced to include shim in his Cabinet as Defense Minister, he never forgave Peres for what he considered an act of political sabotage.

Peres has spent the four years as party chairman painstakingly rebuilding the demoralized organizational ranks of Labor after its disastrous defeat by Likud. But his emergence from the bruising, internecine struggles is so recent that he has not yet been able to stamp a decisive leadership image on the party. He is a consensus figure, a perhaps overly pragmatic politician who seems to change his views to suit his audience. Even today, he is still tainted by his one-time defection: his former enemies still do not completely trust him.

Though he can be an outgoing glad-hander of relaxed charm, who willingly puts in six days a week in the political boondocks of Israel listening to ward heelers and party pros, Peres is also a studious, scholarly man who reads voraciously in three languages and writes poetry for intellectual relaxation. His office in the Labor Party's headquarters building on the Tel Aviv waterfront is usually swarming with admirers, foreign visitors and party hacks. Inside, the room is piled high with books in Hebrew and English (prominently including Hedrick Smith's work, Reagan: The Man, The President). A color portrait of his patron Ben-Gurion stares down from the wall.

"I don't get much spare time," he told TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief David Aikman in an interview last week. "But what I like tremendously is the sun, the sea and books. If I can have any combination of the three, I'm the happiest man alive." His view of the political process is also a balance of the activist and the intellectual: "Democracy is a school with endless classes, a permanent education. I know it's extremely difficult, because basically people look at politics for drama, for a kill, a bullfight. I'm not sure my temperament or my conscience is made for that."

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