David Grossman - Sleeping on a Wire - Conversations with Palestinians in Israel

Arnon Sofer has been saying these things for more than two decades. The Israeli left accuses him of racism, and the right accuses him of defeatism. The Arabs in Israel are angry that he suspects them of an aspiration for autonomy, an aspiration most of them forcefully deny.

To myself — through the hail of data, factors, and numbers that he pounded me with in forceful amicability, I considered to what extent the demographic question had, in recent years, become one of the central points of debate in our faded political discourse. Each side brings its own data, and even data that everyone accepts get interpreted by each side in accordance with its needs. All kinds of predictions about what year will bring equal numbers get launched—2015, 2030, 2045 (these relate to equality in all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, including the occupied territories). Many treat the numbers and percentages submissively and simplistically, as if at the very moment the demographic tie score is reached — and only at that moment — some magic, total process will begin. As if an especially determined or frightened minority, or one suffering from megalomania, cannot with its military power and advantage long rule over a majority larger than itself. As if we are not now deep in the tie score’s magnetic field, turning us for all practical purposes into a binational state in which there are inhabitants of three different ranks — Jews, Arab citizens, and the Arabs in the territories. As if the only important thing is how many Jews versus how many Arabs, and not what kind of life we make for ourselves here.

Sa’id Zeidani is the only one, so far, who has raised the idea of autonomy for Israeli Palestinians in such an open and explicit way. The idea won attention in 1989, after Arafat’s Algiers declaration of a Palestinian state. The Palestinians in Israel realized that day that Arafat’s “state” did not include them, and this meant that their interests were not even on the Palestinian agenda. “We, whatever happens, stay on the shelf,” a Palestinian-Israeli intellectual told me. This realization, along with the sense of discrimination in Israel, with the fear of a wave of Russian immigration, and perhaps — and this is only conjecture — smarting from the PLO’s failure to make any mention of the Arabs in Israel in its declarations, apparently induced Zeidani to publish his plan at the end of 1989. One may also suppose that now, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the blow to the Israeli Communist Party — which for years led the struggle for equal rights for Arabs — some of its supporters will turn to more extreme and separatist modes of thought.

The most forceful opposition to Dr. Zeidani’s plan came, as I’ve noted, from the leadership of the Arabs in Israel. The arguments brought against it dealt with its geographical impracticability, with the implausibility that the Jewish majority would agree to it, and with the belief that demanding autonomy would lead the country to treat its Arab citizens more harshly.

“One of the central arguments always used by the extreme right is that the Arabs don’t show their cards. Now they are suddenly being given a present by Arab groups — not in foreign currency, but in gold — autonomy!” fumed Salim Jubran, editor of the Communist Party newspaper Al-Ittihad , in an interview with a local Haifa newspaper. Knesset member Nawaf Masalha (Labor) said, “The demand for autonomy will pull out from under us the moral correctness and legitimacy of our demands for Palestinian independence in the territories, first and foremost with regard to the Israeli left, which is our partner in this struggle. Whoever demands autonomy sabotages relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel.”

“Of course they attacked me,” Zeidani says dispassionately, as if he were not the target of the attacks. “I’m saying very harsh things, after all. But perhaps if for forty years you give the entire public a political education in a certain direction, you can expect that such ideas will not break through the ideological and pragmatic barriers. Their realization demands something hard and serious, and the political leadership is trying to escape into something easier. But I would like to hear,” he queried, “what your opinion is, as an Israeli.”

I responded that I respected his courage. That while he spoke I thought of how unfortunate it was that Israel had not been wise enough to create, for a man like him, channels through which he could express and realize himself as a real Israeli. But I agree, I told him, with only some of the opinions you’ve expressed. The word “autonomy” is not so frightening to me — I would like the Palestinian citizens of Israel to win maximum freedom as a national minority, to be able to manage their independent educational system, to establish an Arab university, to run their own religious institutions, instead of a Jewish official appointing the kadis (judges) and imams (preachers). I would like their young people to perform national service within and for their communities, and I would like the Israeli government to recognize, finally, their representative bodies, such as the Supreme Oversight Committee. Yet all this must be done, in my opinion, in the framework of the State of Israel, as the country of the Jewish nation, existing alongside the country of the Palestinian nation. I know that you don’t agree with me, and that in your opinion there is no chance for such integration, but in my opinion, even after forty-three years, we have still not sincerely tried, with full commitment, to create integration in the State of Israel. We have still not clarified for ourselves, Arabs and Jews, the meaning and requirements of terms like “equality,” “coexistence,” and “citizenship.” The process that took place between us up until now was, largely, one of mutual evasion and abstention. I’ve spoken a great deal; now I’d like to ask, in conclusion, whether you intend to take any practical measures to carry out your ideas?

“I am not a politician,” he said, “and I have no ambitions in that direction. I would like to contribute to self-understanding. It is a process, and there are already far-reaching changes in the existing leadership. The ideas have made their mark. The Progressive Movement speaks of ‘self-management’; the Islamic Movement is working for autonomy in education; Knesset member Daroushe has established a party made up solely of Arabs, there is a Supreme Oversight Committee of the Arab public, there is a Sons of the Village movement. All these are the germs. It’s true that today autonomy is a theoretical idea. But I’m telling you that ten years from now there will be a whole range of problems that will have no solution except in that direction. Problems of employment. Economic and social problems.

“So I think that I’m presenting you with a great challenge. I am presenting a great challenge to Jewish democracy, and Jewish values, and your entire tradition. I am presenting you here with a moral demand in the name of the categorical law that is above and beyond questions of nation or religion. It is a matter of humanity!” For the first time since the beginning of our conversation Zeidani raised his voice, and his face paled a bit. “You, by discriminating against me, are saying that I am a man of less worth than you are. That I am less than a man. If you say that — and that’s what the attitude of the Israeli majority implies, it follows logically — then the practical conclusion, in an Aristotelian sense, is to slap you in the face.”

Early morning in Faradis, on the old Hadera-Haifa road .

The coffeehouse sits right on the street. When I come and sit there, the conversation of the men dies out. They examine me carefully. Then they disappear. Around the square the stores open with a yawn. The large village awakens slowly. It lives with the road, just as another village might live with a river — small children sit on its edge and gaze longingly at the other side; boys careen with their bicycles between the waves of traffic and navigate them boldly; a shepherd crosses with three goats and two cabbages…