A Minister Without Portfolio--or Illusions

Salah Tarif, the first non-Jew to serve in an Israeli government, is under no illusions about the political minefield that awaits him as he takes up his post as minister without portfolio in hard-liner Ariel Sharon’s Cabinet.

“Everything I say or do is being put under a microscope,” Tarif said in an interview here in his ancestral village near Israel’s northern border. From the night his party’s central committee nominated him as one of eight Labor ministers in Sharon’s broad-based coalition government, Tarif has earned both praise and brickbats from Arabs and Jews.

His decision to stand silent while his fellow ministers-elect sang the Israeli national anthem--which speaks of a Jewish soul yearning to return to Zion--earned Tarif criticism from Israeli Jews. His decision to join a government that is led by the conservative Likud and includes parties of the far right brought a hail of criticism from Arabs.

But the 47-year-old Tarif, who served as an Israeli paratrooper before he entered parliament in 1992, also received congratulatory phone calls on the night of his nomination from Sharon, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and Israeli President Moshe Katzav.

“Sharon was the first one to call me,” Tarif said. “He said: ‘I am so happy. You were an officer, you served the country . . . you will be a good minister and have many tasks in my government.”

When Sharon presented his government to parliament Wednesday night, he singled out Tarif. Lawmakers broke their own rules by applauding the Druze minister when he took the oath of office.

Within his own Druze community, Tarif’s elevation to the role of Cabinet minister is seen as an overdue acknowledgment of the sect’s contributions to the Jewish state.

The Druze, whose secretive religion is an offshoot of Islam, have chosen to serve in the army, unlike most of their fellow Israeli Arabs, who are exempt from service. The nation’s 100,000 Druze traditionally also have participated in mainstream political parties at a far higher rate than other Arabs. But Druze have long complained that they suffer from discrimination and that their villages have higher rates of unemployment and poverty than Jewish communities.

Tarif said he is determined to serve as an advocate within the government for the rights of non-Jewish minorities.

“I want to work on Arab-Jewish relations, to be the representative of 1 million [minority] citizens,” he said. “I am not here to beautify Israeli democracy.” He will quit the government if Sharon fails to give him a meaningful role in improving the lives of Israeli Arabs, he said.

The evidence of a crisis in Jewish-Arab relations is everywhere. The Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which has claimed more than 400 lives and spilled over briefly in October to Israeli Arab areas, has taken a tremendous toll. Sharon’s government must move quickly, Tarif said, to rebuild relations among ethnic and religious communities and to put peace talks with the Palestinians back on track.

“I want to sit at Ariel Sharon’s ear and keep telling him: ‘Make a historic move for the people and for the state. After all, you are not seeking a career, what you are after now is to make history,’ ” he said.

But Arabs are skeptical that Tarif will be able to make an impact in Sharon’s government.

“I think that any non-Jew who will take upon himself the position of a minister in this government is making himself a fig leaf to cover the government’s nakedness,” said Hashem Mahameed, an Israeli Arab member of parliament. “I think that what he’s doing now is not accepted by the vast majority of the Arab population in Israel. In the eyes of most of us, this looks like a partnership with [Avigdor] Lieberman and [Rehavam] Zeevi and Sharon. To us, he has crossed the lines.”

Lieberman and Zeevi are far-right politicians who have taken militant stands against the nation’s minority Arab population. In the past, Zeevi has advocated transferring the nation’s Arab citizens out of Israel, arguing that they pose a security and demographic threat.

“I don’t envy Tarif, to tell you the truth,” said Elie Rekhess, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University who runs the Center for the Study of Arab Politics in Israel. “He will be pressured to cater to different audiences. He will be blamed by Arabs for not being militant enough in pushing forward the Arab agenda, and if he is too nationalistic, some government members will say we have a fifth column in the Cabinet.”

Still, Rekhess said, Tarif’s appointment “is an extremely important breakthrough, a landmark in Jewish-Arab relations in the state. A taboo has been broken that has lasted not less than 52 years. I see it as a part of a general change within the Jewish majority of a growing openness and awareness of the rights of others.”

One of Tarif’s first tasks will be to rebuild trust between the Druze and the state, and between Druze and other Israeli Arabs. Druze were angered by the army’s failure to rescue a Druze border patrol officer who bled to death while guarding a Jewish shrine in Nablus attacked by Palestinians in the early days of the uprising. Druze also say that too many of their men have been placed on the front lines during the uprising, creating friction between their community and both other Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.

“I am ready to send my children to defend their motherland,” Tarif said, “but not to be part of an occupation army that is engaging in provocation.”

Tarif also must overcome doubts about his own past. He comes from a powerful family within the Druze community, the grandson of the late Sheik Amin Tarif, spiritual leader of the Druze. But the younger Tarif was arrested in 1983 on suspicion of embezzling funds from soldiers, although he was never prosecuted for the alleged offense. He was charged in 1988 with taking bribes while serving as the mayor of this village, about 80 miles north of Jerusalem. He was acquitted.

Receiving well-wishers this week in his home during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, Tarif sat in a room lined with photos taken over the years of him with the movers and shakers of the Labor Party and with Arab leaders. He acknowledged a sense of dread about sitting with Zeevi and Lieberman in government, men who he said espouse “racist” views about Arabs. But he defended his decision to become a minister.

“I decided to fight from within the government, to sit at the table and not to stay in parliament, where my views would be small stories on the inside pages of the newspaper,” Tarif said. “Even the Arabs now say: Let’s give Sharon a chance, let’s see what happens.”

After all, Tarif said, the hawkish Sharon already has surprised the Arabs by being the first prime minister to bring an Arab into his Cabinet.

Sharon’s broad-based government, which enjoys a solid majority in the 120-seat parliament, offers “a great chance” for Israel, Tarif said. “It may help the Israeli people overcome some psychological obstacles and make hard decisions” to achieve a historic compromise with the Palestinian people.