The incoming coalition of the Israeli Prime Minister-elect, Mr Ariel Sharon, took on near-final shape yesterday, with an Israeli Arab winning a ministerial portfolio for the first time in the country's history.
A veteran general secured the critical Defence Ministry post, and two of the most vociferous critics of peacemaking efforts with the Palestinians also gained cabinet positions. The government is now set to take office on Wednesday.
Under the terms of their "unity" partnership, Mr Sharon, leader of the hard-line Likud party, had given his junior partners in the moderate Labour party a free hand in choosing their ministerial representatives, and Labour's central committee yesterday selected a Knesset member, Mr Salah Tarif, a member of the minority Muslim Druze sect - the most markedly loyal Israeli-Arab community - for the position of minister-without-portfolio.
Mr Sharon had been indicating that he might give a Likud cabinet seat to an Arab politician - both in an effort to rebuild the Jewish establishment's relations with the million-strong Arab minority, devastated when Israeli police killed 13 Israeli Arabs during protests last October, and as a sign of goodwill to an Arab world wary of the new prime minister's controversial military background.
Labour yesterday did the job for him, and Mr Sharon immediately called Mr Tarif to offer congratulations.
"We are truly entering a new era", said a delighted Mr Tarif, a former army officer, adding that he saw his selection as a "badge of honour" for the Druze. Palestinian officials also praised the new minister.
More significant than Mr Tarif's unprecedented appointment, however, was one of the other choices made by the Labour forum as it selected its eight ministers. The central committee elected yet another in Israel's seemingly endless series of generals-turned-top-politicians, Mr Benjamin BenEliezer, to the position of Minister of Defence. The Iraqi-born Mr BenEliezer is a former Israeli military governor of the West Bank - a centrist in something of the late Yitzhak Rabin's mould, albeit considerably less charismatic, who often criticised the Israeli occupation even as he was upholding it, but who more recently also chastised his own party leader, the defeated, caretaker prime minister, Mr Ehud Barak, for persisting with peace negotiations amid the violence.
The indefatigable Mr Shimon Peres was elected unopposed to as Foreign Minister.
The cabinet will not, however, lack hardliners. Mr Avigdor Lieberman and Mr Rehavam Ze'evi, members of a far-right Knesset faction whose mistrust and dislike of the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, outstrips even Mr Sharon's, were also named to the cabinet.