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

Sheikh Abdallah Nimr Darwish, founder of the movement and among its most prominent leaders, sighs when I ask him how the great power he wields affects him. “In politics, when a man my age takes up a position of power, that’s a big thing for him. I’m looking to resign now. Enough already! Enough!”

“Are you tired? You haven’t accomplished enough?”

“No, no. Everything I’ve planned I’ve achieved, thank God. I even achieved what I didn’t plan. I didn’t think that in the 1990s a man from the Islamic Movement would be the mayor of a city like Um Elfahm. If we’ve already achieved Um Elfahm, I don’t think it’s at all impossible for us to win the city. The big one, Nazareth.”

“And after that?” I asked.

The sheikh flashes me a smile, direct to the dungeons of my fear. “Afterward the government, no? Relax. All of you, relax. Nazareth is something very important for us. We don’t think beyond that. If we do, we need to build an Arab society in Israel that will fight on two principles: to achieve all our legitimate rights and not to break the law. If we achieve that, that’s the society I’m seeking.”

“If that’s the case, why so far have you refrained from entering national politics to achieve your rights?”

“I don’t reject that. But we haven’t yet decided to do it. I hope that within two or three months the Arab leadership in this country will sit down and decide to present a united Arab slate of candidates for the Knesset. As long as there is no such slate, I have no interest in national politics.”

“Will Jews be accepted into such a party?”

The sheikh, emphatically: “Arabs. Arabs . That’s enough. Enough already.”

“That’s racism.”

He shakes his head angrily. “Whoever wants to talk about racism should take a look at most of the Zionist parties! You’ll find racism there. All those parties, except for Mapam, the United Workers Party, put Jews in the Knesset with Arab votes! Show me one Zionist party that gave an Arab a chance to fill any important position! One government minister! One deputy minister in a serious job! We’re 18 percent of the population! I’m not a racist. I’m a believing man who knows that racism is Satan’s creed. Satan said explicitly, ‘I am unwilling to accept man, because you created him from sand, and I am made from fire.’ That’s racism.” He leans forward, his eyebrows slightly arched, forced upward. “And if in the end there’s an Arab minister in the cabinet, you know what they’ll make him? Minister without portfolio! Do you know what humiliation we feel when they appoint us a Minister for Arab Affairs? Hey, do you have a Minister for Jewish Affairs? And why do the police need an Officer for Minority Affairs? Isn’t just a regular officer enough? Let him investigate the minorities and the majority. Why, everywhere I go, do you make me feel — Stop! You enter afterward! No. No. This time I want to enter first. To be the first to enter the hall in which they are deciding about me. Deciding my fate.”

Why has the Islamic Movement refrained from putting its own slate up for elections to the Knesset? One possibility is that today it enjoys ever-growing esteem — some estimate its electoral power as the equivalent of six of the parliament’s 120 seats — but that it is cautious about getting a precise measure of that support. Another possibility is that participation in Knesset elections would imply de facto recognition of Israeli sovereignty. Its Knesset members would have to swear loyalty to the Jewish state and to the laws of the Knesset, which are, according to Sheikh Raad Salah, “opposed to what God commanded and bestowed upon us.” Participation in Knesset elections would force the movement to publish an official platform in which it would have to take clear positions on many issues; apparently it wishes to refrain from this. One may assume that they prefer to leave many fundamental matters touching on the life of the zealous Muslim in a Jewish state to speculation, confidences, and silent prayer.

Participation in local elections however, is permissible, even desirable, in the view of the Islamic Movement. In town councils they can determine the character of Arab rule over Arabs, and it is a step of sorts in the direction of the independent, autonomous rule that Islamic Movement activists “ever aspire to, but do not actively pursue,” as Sheikh Kamel Rian diplomatically puts it.

Sheikh Darwish receives guests in his home in Kafr Kassem in a gray robe and black plastic slippers. The house is simply furnished. A few armchairs, a single couch, a wood table, and a bookcase with volumes of religious books. A large urn filled with cold water sits on the windowsill. There is one spot of color in the room — a poster the sheikh received in Mecca when he performed the haj , or pilgrimage required of all Muslims. It shows a Chinese child gazing longingly at the Kaaba and at the Dome of the Rock. There are 31 million Muslims in China.

“So ask — how many Palestinians are there in the world? Five and a half million. Arabs? One hundred sixty million. Muslims? One thousand two hundred million! What, you’re not afraid that a day will come when all the Arabs will be sick of you? Not only the Arabs in Israel, but those everywhere! What behavior!”

It is generally hard to catch him angry. Even when there is an outburst, it seems to have been premeditated. He is generally calm and possesses a kind of serenity that radiates power and security, a leopard-like serenity, I thought, and then recalled that his name Nimr means leopard. He is very conscious of himself, frequently speaking of himself in the third person: “Sheikh Abdallah always says that…” A relatively young man, forty-three, with close to twenty years of public activity behind him. His beard is cropped close to his cheeks, and his face is a fascinating one. Sometimes, in the course of a single phrase, an entire range of ages fans across it, from childhood to old age. At one moment it is saturated with craftiness and evil, and experiences that are greater than his years; at another it is simple and innocent. He is certainly not naïve. More than anything else, one sees in him the desire of a very strong man to dispel apprehension about him by means of a demonstrative effort to appear more disarming. When you meet him, it becomes clear how much the entire movement has internalized its leader’s mode of behavior.

His six-year-old daughter, Bara’a, enters the room. A full-bodied, lively girl with black hair. She cuddles him, pulls his beard, assaults him, and he accepts his suffering with love. I ask him if he remembers himself at that age.

“I was an unquiet boy. I wasn’t easy. I made problems for my mother. I was ill from the age of eight months. Polio. To this day my left side is paralyzed. I was with my father and mother all the time, and I felt — and they made me feel — so spoiled, special. I remember very well [he pulls his head into his neck, going red with laughter], I don’t know whether to tell you…Father and Mother were young, about thirty, and I slept between them…day and night [he was laughing heartily, his face glowing]. Maybe the way I felt they behaved with me is the way I behave with Bara’a today.”

I asked whether his illness, which struck him in infancy, had influenced his life.

“How should I know? I only know that always, ever since I can remember, I behaved differently from everyone else. I, for instance, even before I was a believer, never drank. Never! Because I’d see drunks and the way they acted, and I didn’t want to be like them. I’d say, In any case I have to do all sorts of things to look more or less like everyone else, so how would it look if I were drunk?”

He halted for a moment. Sank into himself. “Look,” he said in the end, “I was just thinking that maybe I’ve made a mistake. In all I’ve said and written my entire life, I’ve never mentioned the handicapped. I think that has been an error. Maybe I should do it every week! Understand that I did not myself suffer. I did not feel alone as a child, I did not feel inferior. Maybe because my family was an important one so people didn’t dare. That’s our mentality, but now, after having spoken about it, maybe I’ll start talking about it outside, writing about it.”