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Next day, however, it was learned that some kind of compromise had been worked out in the Cabinet. Soon after Sharon called Begin to say that he would be bidding goodbye to his friends in the Defense Ministry and the army on Monday, an aide to the Prime Minister disclosed that Sharon would probably remain in the Cabinet. Sharon then corroborated the report, explaining: "There was a reshuffle of portfolios, and that's the end of the problem. I am still in the Cabinet. Begin did not fire me." There were reports that, as a Minister Without Portfolio, he would serve as Begin's chief security adviser and as a member of the security committee and the committee dealing with the Lebanese negotiations. If that happens, Sharon may remain an influential if embittered member of Begin's inner circle. He told associates late last week that he felt he had been let down by both Begin and Shamir. He said he was "disappointed in the Old Man" for not helping him more strenuously, but he was furious with the Foreign Minister for not returning from Europe more quickly to render support.
Begin is expected to hold the Defense portfolio himself for about a month, after which it is likely to go to Arens. A tough and occasionally abrasive diplomat, Arens is also an aeronautical engineer who keeps on his embassy desk the models of planes he has helped design, including the Kfir jet fighter. Born in Lithuania in 1925, he emigrated to the U.S. at the beginning of World War II. Later he served two years in the U.S. Army and studied aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1948 he emigrated to Israel, where he joined the Irgun Zvai Leumi and met Menachem Begin. In 1980, while he was serving as a right-wing legislator who had opposed the peace treaty with Egypt, Arens turned down the chance to become Ezer Weizman's successor as Defense Minister, apparently because he did not want to be in charge of the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the Sinai.
On Friday, at about the time Ariel Sharon was telling an audience in Tel Aviv that "the mark of Cain" had been planted on his forehead by the week's events, several thousand Israelis attended the funeral, in the port city of Haifa, of Emil Eliyahu Greenzweig, 33, the victim of the grenade attack of the previous evening. Professor Elkana Yehuda spoke of Greenzweig, who had recently received a master's degree in philosophy and mathematics from Hebrew University, as "a symbol of love and tolerance." Yehuda expressed his hope that the current national debate would not lead to "the destruction of the Third Temple," a term that Israelis sometimes use for their 35-year-old state. Later, when Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren told the gathering, "Our hands did not shed this blood," a Haifa man, Meir Gabai, shouted at him, "You shed this blood!" and others in the crowd called out, "Begin is responsible!" At that point, Olga Greenzweig, the victim's mother, got up and asked that everyone stop the shouting. She also asked the Chief Rabbi to please stop. Emil Greenzweig, a reserve paratroop officer who had fought in the 1967 war, the 1969-70 war of attrition, the 1973 war and the war in Lebanon, was then buried near the grave of his father.