World: MIDDLE EAST: THE WAR AND THE WOMAN

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do differ is on the question of what to do about the occupied territories that Israel shows less and less inclination to relinquish. One faction of the ruling Labor Party, represented by Deputy Premier Yigal Allon, argues for the establishment of paramilitary settlements in the occupied territories. Moshe Dayan favors an interlinked economy to benefit Jew and Arab. A program advocated by Gahal, a right-wing nationalist party led by Cabinet Minister Menahem Begin, is for outright annexation. Though she generally favors Allon, Mrs. Meir has publicly refused to commit herself to any of these approaches—until and unless negotiations with the Arabs begin. For the present, the occupation issue scarcely figures in electoral politics. Elections for seats in the Knesset will take place next month, and Mrs. Meir is practically certain of victory. But her successor may well be determined four years from now by a combination of personality and approach to the occupied territories.

Israel has other problems, many of them the result of economic good times. Approximately 25,000 Arabs from the occupied territories have taken jobs in Israel, but the labor pool is still short. Prices are being kept in line only because the government refuses to sanction wage increases; one result of this is a series of labor disputes, including a postal strike which has trapped a million pieces of mail in the Jerusalem post office. About the only problem for which there appears to be no formula is how to achieve peace. Says Golda Meir: "I don't know when peace will come. But I have no doubt that it will."

Golda Meir's character, like that of the state of Israel, was shaped in the ghettos of Europe and drew on a heritage of two millennia of sorrow and insecurity. The essence of the woman is conviction, without compromise, and expressed with all the subtlety of a Centurion tank. She seldom loses an argument, and once, after a heated policy dispute, so unnerved Dayan that he felt obliged to ask before he left her office: "Do you still love me, Golda?" Her convictions extend to her personal life. She still refuses to ride in a German-made car, and is so egalitarian that even as Premier she cooks her own breakfast and will occasionally make tea for a military courier. For all her toughness, she remains feminine enough to weep at the funeral of a soldier.

Like many other Israelis of her generation, including former Premier David Ben-Gurion, Mrs. Meir was born in Russia. At the age of eight, she emigrated from Pinsk to Milwaukee. She can still recall the early days in Russia, when her family regularly boarded up the windows as protection against gangs bent on pogroms against the Jews. On one occasion, while she was playing in the streets with other Jewish children, cossacks spurred their horses to jump over the heads of the children. "If there is any logical explanation for the direction that my life has taken," she said many years later, "it is the desire and determination to save Jewish children from a similar scene and from a similar experience."

In Milwaukee, Golda grew into a fair-skinned girl with chestnut braids, deep-gray eyes and a lively intelligence. At 14, she left home to live with a sister in Denver. There she met a politically enthusiastic group of Jewish students and an introspective sign painter named Morris Myerson. Zionists