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

“I,” Shammas responded, “always said that Zionism’s most serious mistake in 1948 was that it kept the 156,000 Arabs who did not run away and were not expelled. If you really wanted to establish a Jewish state, you should have kicked me out of Fasuta, too. You didn’t do it — so treat me as an equal! As an equal in Israeliness!”

Yehoshua: “But you won’t receive one single right more for belonging to the Israeli nation. On the contrary! I’ll take away your special minority rights! I’ll impose additional duties on you! For instance, you’ll have to study the Bible, just as in France all citizens study Molière and in England Shakespeare!”

“But as a literary text!” Shammas cuts him off, “not as a Jewish text!”

“What do you mean?!” Yehoshua shouts from the depths of his armchair. “We have no Shakespeare or Molière. We have the Bible and Talmud and Jewish history, and you’ll study them, and in Hebrew! Everything will be in Hebrew! You can’t want, on the one hand, your own cultural preserve and on the other hand be part of the nation! What would happen if a school in some wealthy Tel Aviv suburb should say, ‘I want to teach in English! Our children will spend a lot of time overseas, and it’s best for them to learn everything in English!’ The Ministry of Education wouldn’t allow it! And if they should want to teach computers instead of Bible, the Ministry wouldn’t agree! They have to study as part of the Israeli nation, which receives its sewage and health services and education from the state, and that’s the way it will be with you, Anton. If you are part of the nation, you sever part of your culture!”

“If that’s the case,” Shammas responds, “then Judaism also has to be separated from Israeliness, and you’ll oppose that by force of arms.”

“But how is that possible?” A. B. Yehoshua asks almost voicelessly. “Try, for instance, separating France from Frenchness — is that possible?”

Shammas: “France and Frenchness come from the same root, but Judaism and Israeliness is a different matter! That’s why I advocate the de-Judaization and de-Zionization of Israel!”

“And are you willing to de-Palestinize the country that will be created in the territories?”

“I’m all for it! I won’t agree to finding solutions to the Israeli national state in the framework of Jewish religious law, just as I will oppose finding the Palestinian constitution in Islamic religious law!”

Yehoshua: “Then you should also oppose a Palestinian Law of Return for the Palestinian state!”

“I’m in favor of a Law of Return if it’s limited in time,” Shammas specifies. “Only for fifteen years — give an opportunity for all the Jews and the Palestinians in the Diaspora to decide if they want to come to their country, to Israel or Palestine, and then close the gates, and the law turns into a regular immigration law except in cases where it is clear that there is immigration caused by hardship.”

Yehoshua: “And what about the 350,000 Russian Jews who came this year? If there wasn’t a Law of Return, and if I had to ask your permission, maybe they wouldn’t have been able to come here!”

“They’d get in! They’re hardship cases!”

“What hardship? You’d tell me that it’s only economic hardship!”

“Listen, Buli,” Shammas sympathized. “That’s not the problem. The problem is that I’m asking you for a new definition of the word ‘Israeli,’ so that it will include me as well, a definition in territorial terms that you distort, because you’re looking at it from the Jewish point of view! But the minute we determine that the country is an entity that exists in a certain territory , then everyone who is in that territory is an equal part of it, and then an Arab in Jaljulia is Israeli just like A. B. Yehoshua. What you’re telling me is because we called this country ‘Israel,’ we have some debt to that name, and that’s idol worship to me! Don’t put me into that Jewish hairsplitting of yours. If ‘Israeli’ is a symbol of Jewish totality, then Jaljulia can’t be a full partner, because it’s not Jewish, period. It can live here, use your sewage, but on the level above sewage there’s a debate, and you apparently haven’t learned anything in these six years, and I guess I haven’t either.”

“Look what you’re doing,” Yehoshua explains after a short time out. “The name ‘Israel’ is 3,500 years old, and it fell on you suddenly in ’48, and now you’re saying, I want to peel off all its roots and leave only the piece with the Declaration of Independence, which we’ll turn into a constitution, and from that we’ll make ourselves a nation. But leave my name alone!” He suddenly boils over. “You’re pushing your way into the name, too? It’s as if I were to intrude into your Palestinian identity and say, I’m also Palestinian, please revamp it so that I can identify with it, too! [Yehoshua turns to me.] Look how he’s not satisfied with one country and one identity — he wants to be together with me in one people and one nation! He hungers to get me into one common nation with him!”

“It’s not hunger, just pure rationality!” Shammas laughs, hinting to Yehoshua that still, despite the hundreds of debates he’s had on the subject, he can rise like a tidal wave, with all his might, on questions that seem to be “only” about general national identity. “You know what your problem is, Buli? You think that ‘Israel’ is a hungry word… ”

For a moment the definition flapped in the air, like the dress of a passing woman, and three writers were entranced by it. Really, I said, maybe for us, the Jews in the country, “Israel” is a somewhat hungry word. It awakens hunger and extremism and possessiveness in us. After all, we refuse to allow the Arabs to participate not only in our internal identity but also in the external manifestations of “Israeliness.” When it comes to the basis of formal citizenship, it is hard for us to be more generous to them, and this poses a delicate question to the Jewish people in Israel: Do we still not understand Israel, in our hearts and in our consciousness, as such a fragile, almost naked, almost wondrous entity, an “essence” or “spark” forged in a fate so unique that no stranger can be appended or taken in? Even just a formal association of citizenship, of equal opportunities, of equal budgets? And another thing, I added, maybe we should take a look at what went wrong with our definition of ourselves as Israelis, and to what extent this definition has been imposed, despite itself, on many others who do not think as Anton does. I related how, from the minute I was exposed to the sense of suffocation Palestinian Israelis feel within the definition of “Israeli,” that family name worn around their necks as in a forced marriage. Israeliness for me also became a little cool to the touch, and was already like a garment, not skin. Who knows, I asked Yehoshua, maybe the fact that Jews in Israel are still unable to create for themselves a clear, harmonic national identity, as you would like, is partially the result of their being forced to apply this identity — even if only because of its official name — to another element, in contact with which the definition is dissonant?

“That really is a problem,” Yehoshua said, “and we have to consider: do the Arabs interfere with defining our identity? It seems to me only in a certain sense, but not in the long run. That is, at first Israeliness as an identity is infringed upon, because we need to apply it to Arabs as well. So when Anton comes, or the Druze, and they say, ‘we’re Israeli, too,’ it complicates matters, and something in that identity becomes foggy. Then it’s easy to retreat immediately into Jewish identity, and that includes the willingness to live in the Diaspora. Yes…at first it impinges on the clarity of the identity, but if you ask me about the Israeli concept of identity as I see it, as a return from Jewish fractionality to the Jewish totality that is Israeliness, then the Arab presence is a meaningful element of it. Just as for the French, Corsicanness and Bretonness are part of the Parisian menu. Yes, the Arab presence is a facet that leads to daily moral obligations, in the attitude of a majority to the minority within it, and it is also a facet that colors the Israeli language with nuances. It is that presence that also gives us the sense of territory — I myself have absolutely no sense of territory here in Israel without the knowledge that the Arab is part of it, and just as one of the components of my territory is the scent of citrus fruit and the special air of Jerusalem, and the goats, and the cactuses, the Arab presence also lives within it.”