A Druze intifada?

MK Ophir Pines-Paz: Isn't it true that in Yarka the head of the appointed committee is afraid to go there?"

Rani Finchi: "He's not afraid, there is a police prohibition barring entry to the place - they put a coffin at the entrance to the council."

Pines-Paz: "So we'll capitulate to violence and threats? Where are we living? Put them in jail."

Finchi: "We contacted the police and they are not allowing us to enter Yarka. We are pressuring them every day. We're losing this local authority. The authority's head is threatened to the extent that his life may be in danger if he sets foot in Yarka."

(Dialogue between the head of the Knesset's Interior Committee, MK Ophir Pines-Paz, and Rani Finchi, the director of the Interior Ministry's local government administration, Interior Committee meeting, 4.9.07)

Sunday a week ago, a rather impressive convoy arrived in the town of Yarka, a large, pretty and thriving Druze village not far from Acre. Fourteen policemen and some 10 bodyguards accompanied the armored vehicle transporting Ari Tal, the chairman of the Yarka appointed committee. Tal - a lieutenant colonel in the army reserves, a 22-year veteran of the Israel Air Force, the principal of the AIF's Technical School and Tirat Hacarmel's mayor for 10 years - is no coward, but he will likely remember for quite some time his previous visit to the office he was given in the town's council building just over two weeks ago. "It's like in a movie Western," he says. Except that in this film, Tal was no observer - he was a participant, albeit a passive one.

"I was working in my office on the third floor," Tal recalls. "At around 11 A.M., eight thugs walked in. They approached me, grabbed my shirt, lifted me out of the chair and starting punching me. It was just like a lynching. They dragged me out to the corridor; I let them and only tried to ward off their punches. When we got close to the banister they told me: 'You're not going down with the elevator or the stairs.' I realized that they wanted to throw me down from the third floor. I've flown many times in my life, but never this way. In the end, I somehow managed to reach the stairs, then they put me into the elevator and spirited me away to some house in the village. In the end the police came and rescued me."

Rafik Salameh, the former council head, who was deposed and whose place Tal is supposed to fill, smiles when he hears about Tal's experience. The way he sees it, the incident suggested the height of restraint and politeness. "Tal entered the council, there was a gathering and there was a decision that he would leave," Salameh says, sitting in an office in the College of the Middle East, a village institution run by one of his relatives. One of his men offers to fill in the picture. "I was there," says the associate, who prefers to remain anonymous. "The men opened the door to the office, approached Tal and told him: 'You're not wanted, leave,' and he got up from his chair and walked out. I walked beside him in the corridor, nobody struck him and no one threatened to throw him out the window. Here in Yarka, if they wanted to do so, they would. They don't talk." The police actually favor Tal's account. Four Yarka residents, including Salameh's brother and two of his nephews, were arrested on suspicion of trying to teach Tal how to fly without wings.

Millions in deficit

It's a strange place, Yarka. According to data presented in a letter from the Interior Ministry's previous director general, which relayed the decision to unseat Salameh from his position last April, this is one of the country's most unsuccessful local authorities. It has a cumulative deficit of NIS 68 million, a sum equivalent to 172 percent its budget. Only 14 percent of Yarka's 14,000 residents pay municipal taxes; a mere 8 percent pay their water bills. In recent years, 252 water outages have occurred here, garbage litters the village streets and local council employees did not receive their salaries for some 14 months. Not only was the 2007 budget not approved, it was not even prepared, because the council did not have a treasurer.

These troubling figures do not correspond to the sight that greets the visitor at the access road to Yarka. Even during weekday mornings, it is apparent that Yarka has become one of the biggest shopping complexes in the North. Two large malls, a giant store selling baby products, a huge car licensing bureau, a sign announcing the upcoming opening of a branch of Ace Yarka concrete works, and countless car sale outlets. On Saturdays, they say, the entrance road to Yarka is totally jammed by all the cars. Everyone realizes that these businesses bring in millions of shekels. What is less than clear is how only a small amount of this wealth manages to trickle down into the council's empty coffers.

As noted, this past April the Interior Ministry decided to put an end to this state of affairs. Ram Belnikov, the ministry's previous director general, advised the former interior minister, Roni Bar-On, to depose both the council head and the council itself and to replace them with an appointed committee. This move was part of a series of dismantling local councils, which Bar-On effected primarily in the Arab and Druze sectors, but also in some Jewish councils, including Ofakim and Arad.

But in Yarka - how shall I put it - this decision was not well received. "The decision was unfair," says Salameh. "I was elected in 2004 and I received a council in tatters. Of all the businesses located here at the village entrance, only two were paying city taxes; a business measuring 10,000 square meters was registered as if its total area amounted to only 900 square meters; hundreds of families didn't even have tax files. Houses were connected to the water system without even having a meter." The real culprit, says Salameh, is the Interior Ministry, which allowed matters to continue in this manner for years. Now, he says, it's easy for the ministry to come down on the weak ones - meaning him, Yarka and the Druze community in general.

A short time after the decision was made to remove Salameh, a protest rally was held in the village. Salameh asserts that the rally, organized by the local "resistance committee," was attended by people from across the entire political spectrum, which in the case of Yarka consists of two families. "All sorts of proposals were put forward," says Salameh. "People said that if they're forcing out the council head, then they should bring in someone from the village to replace him. We have pensioners from the army, generals more senior than Tal." And because in Yarka, as Salameh's anonymous associate testified, they prefer deeds to words, the next day, the doors of the local council offices were welded shut and a coffin was placed in front of the building. It was said to be intended for the person who would come to replace Salameh.

Salameh says he doesn't know who put the coffin there. "It took us two weeks to convince the village's youths to remove it," he relates. But it's hard for him to say that he doesn't understand them. "We have nothing against Tal or against the Jews," says Salameh. "This village is more hospitable to guests than any other place in the country, so much so that its honor is offended." And this appointment, says Salameh, is perceived as an offense to the village's honor and therefore "it will not happen." A day before the incident at Tal's office, says Salameh, village youths chased the new council head away after he came to visit one of the village schools. They "chased him all the way to Jedida" [the neighboring village - M.R.]. That's why Salameh was not surprised about what happened the day after. "It was predictable, the writing was on the wall. Tal's entry into the council signified a provocation."

After a brief visit to Yarka it's hard to assess the real extent of Salameh's support. Tal, who was named head of the appointed committee in early August (for a few months, the accompanying accountant, Adam Einav, served as the council head, but the doors of the council were welded shut and Einav feared entering the village), says he receives supportive messages from residents who want the council to function at last, never mind who heads it. Presumably quite a few of Yarka's residents feel this way. When we toured the village with Salameh, there was no sense of him being a leader of a populist struggle. But at the same time, it is clear that the bitterness Salameh feels at the discrimination against and the marginalizing of the Druze is shared by many, even if they are not among Salameh's supporters.

Voting for the cousin

Sheikh Muhamed Ghamal, one of Yarka's independents, has no objection in principle to deposing Salameh; he just doesn't believe that Yarka's problems revolve around him. To his way of thinking, the problems stem from within, from the clan rule, which is very strong in the Druze sector. "No matter what happens, I vote for my cousin, even if he's a drug dealer." But in his mind, the real culprit can be found outside the village - it's called the Israeli establishment, which dismantled the Druze and handed them over to all sorts of dignitaries. The results are visible now. "The Druze are in the worst situation they've ever been in, much worse than the situation of the Arabs," says Ghamal.

According to Ghamal, the original sin was the Druze people's consenting to be drafted into the IDF. "At first the Christians were willing to be drafted, but the Christians have a pope, and he told them not to enlist," says Ghamal, "so the Israelis grabbed the Druze suckers and drafted them." But the Druze didn't get anything in return, the sheikh says. Their lands were taken away from them, just as they were taken away from the Arabs; the houses they build on their lands are demolished in large numbers and they have yet to receive equal status. According to Ghamal, the enlistment rate among the Druze is higher than it is among Jews - the official figures he cites speak of 84 percent of Druze, compared to 78 percent of Jews - but even this fact doesn't improve their situation. "The more you strike at the Druze, the more Zionist they become, even more than the Jews."

Salameh is not as radical as Sheikh Ghamal. He still believes that enlisting in the IDF is worthwhile, but in most of the other matters his views approach those of the sheikh. "We Druze see that while we give everything, we don't receive anything," Salameh says. "There are no entertainment venues here and there are no clubs. Fifty-one Katyushas fell here during the Second Lebanon War; every missile that missed Shlomi landed on us, but the balancing grant in Yarka is an average of NIS 1,200 less per person than the grant in Shlomi. We are screwed, we are losing our identity. The Arabs in Israel have a pillow to rest on at night because they feel they are Palestinians. We don't know who we are. I'm jealous of the Druze in Lebanon and Syria. They know who they are. In the end, we'll be like the SLA [South Lebanese Army]. They'll use us and throw us away."

It was this environment that Tal entered. He heard about the coffin waiting for him at the entrance to the council building after he accepted the appointment. But he was not deterred by it, or by the "very serious warnings" he received from the police. "I like challenges," Tal says. He decided to let the police try and mediate and met several times with Salameh and his associates in the presence of the district police commander. But nothing came of these efforts. "They asked that Salameh remain in his office and run the political affairs and I would run the day-to-day operations. Then I realized things weren't going anywhere, so I decided to come to the council offices." Salameh confirms that he was asked to remain in office. "I know that the law doesn't permit it," he acknowledges, "but a loophole has to be found. In Rome you need to speak Roman and in Yarka, there has to be someone who knows how to talk to the people in their own language."

Tal believes that what worked in Tirat Hacarmel will also work in Yarka. "Yarka could be thriving," he says. "All that is needed is for the businesses to pay city taxes and for those connected to the water and electricity grid to pay their bills." The fact that he comes from the outside, Tal believes, can only be an advantage. "In the Druze councils, after elections, it is common for the group affiliated with the council head to receive jobs," he says. "I'm not obligated to any group."

Tal doesn't buy the talk about discrimination. "The same situation exists in Jewish councils as well. The committee was not formed to harm one sector or another. It was formed to help." Nevertheless, Tal is aware of the symbolic significance of his appointment. "Yarka is in the spotlight. The entire Druze sector is watching. If I fail, then the Interior Ministry fails, the police fail, the rule of law fails."

So Tal returned to his office, accompanied by a heavy security detail. This time round, his visit passed quietly. "There is heavy security around the building," Tal says. But he is not calm. In Taibeh, another village where a Jewish head of an appointed committee was also named, irate local council workers last week locked the council building. Tal is concerned that such actions will spill over to Yarka, especially once he begins to order confiscations from families that didn't pay their tax and water bills. He worries that the real chaos will start then.

Salameh, it must be said, does not allay these concerns. "Tal is endangering himself and the village," he says. "It's impossible to protect him. And I fear that his arrival in the village will be the opening salvo of the Druze intifada." Only Sheikh Ghamal is trying to place things in proportion. "Israel is not afraid of the 300 million Arabs surrounding it, so why would it be afraid of a few guys in Yarka?" he says. "It's not serious, someone is trying to blow the situation out of proportion."

Jack Khouri contributed to this article.