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

“With us — and allow me to limit myself now to my field of study, Arab literature and poetry — the Arab poet or writer cannot criticize his society. Nor is he expected to do so, because his traditional role is to support society. If society lies, the writer is supposed to promote the lie, and then everyone forgets that they themselves created it and they begin to believe it. There are some exceptions among us, important authors unique in their generation — Mohammed Darwish, Emile Habibi — but the others? Court poets. Rhymers. Real social criticism, or a real challenge to society, will not come from them.”

Here are the words of a woman of about twenty who asked to remain anonymous. She is the daughter of a Jewish mother and an Arab father, and when I commented that she could be a classic example of coexistence and that she is the person, perhaps, who can unwaveringly say, “I am Israeli,” she laughed. “I’m not all that sure. I have so much pain with regard to Israel…everything that happens to me happens to me because of that. And I’m always feeling guilty. If something happens, they immediately accuse me — as a Jew, as a Palestinian…Maybe I really can say that I am Israeli, but only from the point of view of being messed up. But maybe that’s what it means to be Israeli.”

She, my momentary ambassador to the fault line, has black hair, very blue eyes, thick eyebrows like two soft bows over her beautiful, red-cheeked face. Her speech is muted with the bashfulness of a young girl. “Sometimes I am the only one among my Jewish and Arab friends who can see how much the preconceptions of both sides are similar, how each side uses exactly the same kinds of preconceptions and stereotypes with regard to the other, and I am always careful not to take sides. It’s very difficult, especially in this situation, when everyone has to identify with a side, because otherwise you barely exist.”

By profession she is a graphic artist, and she says that her graphics are Western. The same is true of the music she likes; the literature she likes is written in Hebrew and English. Arabic literature is, for her tastes, too caught up in what is happening here, the struggle, daily life; it is too polemical. She prefers to express herself in Hebrew. From within the internal contradiction of her situation she has developed her own identity, not Jewish and not Muslim. “Ever since I was little, I have always thought that I was all those things together, that they are inside me. Not that I’m part of them. Because they always tried to affiliate me with one side or another, and I didn’t want to belong but to make them mine. To make them all part of me.”

She has harsh and severe things to say about Arab society in Israel. “The Arabs here, in my opinion, are in a bad state,” she says. “What by now can be important to them? After all, they don’t have an identity of ‘I myself,’ they have no clear idea of who they are. What they really want. What they are allowed to aspire to. So either you compensate yourself by crystallizing a certain identity as an individual, distancing yourself from what is important to society, and thinking only of yourself, or you realize yourself materially: ‘I have a house, I have a car, beautiful children, we go overseas from time to time, my cousin is a doctor, he is a lawyer’—all that materialism is just compensation for the emptiness you made.”

“You’re ignoring,” I stopped her, surprised at how judgmental she was, “that in Arab society in Israel there is, for instance, a great appreciation of education. I’ve met illiterate parents, destitute, who would not think of giving up their child’s education and private lessons. And every family tries to send at least one child to college.”

“That’s very nice,” she responded, composed but resolute, “but again, that education is a college education and no more. It’s not internal education. Not intellectual in the full sense of the word. There is no spiritual richness. There is no real curiosity. In the end, that also is a part of the struggle for survival. They prefer not to think a lot, only to live. Only to get through this situation in one piece. Because to contend with difficulties such as they have in the territories — I don’t know any person here who would be willing to put up with those conditions. People here just want to live well. They want to survive. They want to go on living, no matter under what conditions, no matter what the cost. They’ll say what they’re told to say in order to continue to live here, to build their house, to send their children to college. And the result of all that is assimilation. You assimilate into another society that is not yours. You lose your identity. You’re just a body, you’re not a person on the inside, just a creature who lives according to what others define for you. They tell you what is good and what isn’t good, what is allowed and what isn’t, and, most important, what’s easy. You don’t fight. Don’t demand. You don’t say what’s in your head. You don’t say what you are. You no longer know what you are.”

In conclusion, I wish to present the words of Ahmed Abu Esba of Jat, a graduate of the Kadouri agricultural school, a former teacher and former mayor, and today manager of an iron factory he built.

“We have a basic defect that makes us into people lacking initiative and self-assurance. It begins at home, where the parents’ desires are imposed on the child, not allowing him to develop his own personality. That’s a general Arab problem — from the time they’re small, we don’t encourage our children to take initiative, to create by themselves. What comes out is a person who always depends on others. A parasite. A person who requests only an answer or order from his parents, or from whoever is responsible for him.”

We sat and talked in a shack by his factory in Jat. Abu Esba’s voice is warm, hoarse, full of power. He is fifty-six, strong and solid, sure of himself. Unlike many others, he does not stand helpless before the Israeli establishment. For example, when the mayor of Teibe is requested to prepare a comprehensive development plan for his city, he instead writes, on a single sheet of paper, a list of all his demands from the Ministry of the Interior for the next five years. Abu Esba stands out as one who has quickly adjusted to the rules of the Israeli bureaucracy. “Ariel Sharon, when he was Minister of Commerce and Industry, told us that he was different from the other ministers! With him an orderly request was sufficient, and he would immediately go out in the field and get things moving! I said, Sir! Let’s see you do it. Let’s try an experiment. The next day I dashed off a letter to him: ‘Mr. Minister, we have an approved industrial zone, and I need infrastructure, and I request that for a brief period of four years you grant us the status of a development area, class A, in order to draw in entrepreneurs.’ I prepared detailed material together with an engineering and planning consulting firm, an organized plan, with figures on road construction, electricity, sewage — everything. He immediately sent me his aide, who came, looked. I even gave him a Jat flag.” He swallows a smile. “He went over all my plans and said, ‘Hey, you’re really ready to go!’ I told him, ‘My friend, I’m serious about my business. I don’t like to sit around and gossip.’ ”

Unfortunately, the end of the story is very familiar: “That was five years ago. I haven’t seen him since. And Sharon? He’s building settlements in the territories now, he doesn’t have time for old problems. He only has time to make new problems.”

But we were talking about impotence.

“Look what’s happening with us at our school,” Abu Esba added. “The school is new, modern, and it has to encourage the child’s initiative, his creative thought, his ability to express himself, but with us, since the teachers were educated that way, they prefer to continue with the same old methods. Instead of giving a lesson with a discussion and thought and conclusions, they give dictation: ‘Listen to me and write down what I say!’