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Shamir
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25.03.1948
223987
March 25, 1948 A meeting of the Executive this morning, too. We accepted a plan for 13 [members-ministers] in the Executive [the government-the "Provisional People's Administration"] and an expanded council. Until the Zionist General Council [approves], a committee of four will operate, co-opting Remez as representative of the National Committee. It's been decided to establish a police force and Yehezkel Sacharoff [Sahar] has been instructed to do it. We decided to urge everyone abroad who's from Eretz-Israel and of conscription age to come. In the afternoon, we cut short a meeting of the Defense Committee-in honor of Purim, and from four to eight there was a free conversation with [Ya'akov] Riptin, Berl Raptor, Shkolnik [Eshkol], Yisrael [Galili], and me. Apart from me, only Riptin and Berl were active in the talk. I asked whether the dispute among the parties might be done away with at all. Berl pounced on me, frothing about the appointment of Shlomo R. [Shamir], and Riptin noted that: 1) I had introduced a one-man appointment method, 2) I am appointing Party people. I noted that there has always been a one-man employment method in the Organization, and even when the appointment was ostensibly made by the [General] Staff it was a fiction, and that the appointments I made include: 1) appointment of a division head (from Faction B), 2) appointment of brigade commanders including two members of Mapam, two nonpartisan, and not even one member of my party, 3) when the brigade commanders were appointed, Shlomo Shamir was appointed, too. I don't know what party he's from, but I won't agree to disqualify him just because he's not a member of Mapam. Nahum Sarig was never named commander of the Negev Brigade because the decision to establish the Negev Brigade wasn't made until recently.