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

I can respond to that only by making one assumption: that there will soon be a peace agreement in the Middle East, at least between Israel, the Palestinians, and Jordan. If no such agreement is reached, if the current negotiations end without granting concrete rights — in particular, the right of self-determination — to the Palestinians, who knows what will happen.

But let’s assume that an accord is reached, and that after a few years of autonomy, and after the establishment of a Palestinian state, the Palestinians within Israel nevertheless ask to secede from Israel. How will Israel respond to this threatening challenge? This is, really, the decisive question, the one that keeps many of us from dispensing with the burden of suspicion and animosity, even if we want to do so.

It seems to me that part of the division in Israel over the question of the occupied territories derives from the fact that in the consciousness of most Jews in Israel the “territories” do not coincide — neither psychologically nor emotionally — with the borders of Israeli identity. One could say that the heat of the Israeli identity’s “internal combustion” reaches, among most Jews in Israel, as far as the Green Line. Beyond it, the nature of this heat changes. Either it cools and diffuses or it becomes a conflagration. The fact is that to this day, twenty-five years after the Six-Day War, there is no Israeli consensus for annexing the territories. The people would prefer a peace agreement.

One can believe that giving up the territories will bring the Israelis back into the authentic sphere of experiencing their identity, to a true, current sense of Israeliness. Once again, for the first time in years, the borders of the country and the borders of Israeli identity will coincide. It is impossible to say that these will be the “borders of the national consensus,” because there will be many who will be outraged by the retreat, but within these new-old borders the Jewish majority’s sense of internal justice will without a doubt grow stronger, as will its determination to defend those borders — not out of fear, out of the reduction of its territory, but because the people’s identity with its state, as an organic body maintaining an equally emotional and neuronic link with all its parts, will become clearer and more concrete.

The Palestinians in the territories can make a determined challenge to our right to rule them, partly because we ourselves, deep within, lack confidence in this right. But our identities fill the Green Line borders of the State of Israel with full force. There we also have moral force; and there the collective message we broadcast is unambiguous.

If, in addition to the geographical-external change there also occurs a cognitive change with regard to the Palestinian citizens’ place in society — if we internalize the fact that they are equal partners, if we give the Palestinians the greatest measure of autonomy in areas that present no challenge to the country’s sovereignty (education and culture, religion, community services, independent radio and television, etc.), if bicultural fluency develops in Israel, if it becomes possible to find Arab citizens in every ministry, in every institution, on every newspaper staff, in every school — if all this happens, then the majority in Israel (and I include both Jews and Arabs in this) will be steadfast, as well as correct, in their opposition to separatism. That same majority will also be a counterweight to passive tendencies of isolation, that “absent presence” which is also, in the final account, destructive to the country.

A true state of equal opportunity will put not only the Jews but also the Palestinians in Israel to the test. How willing are they really to be fully and equally integrated into Israeli culture? To what extent have they internalized life in Israel? How much are they willing to step out of the meantime and go into the present and future? To what extent will they be willing to sense a connection with, a sense of belonging to, the country, if it gives them maximum rights and treats them with respect?

The Palestinians in the occupied territories have reached a kind of national and political maturation through breaking the eternal framework, and through bloody struggle. Their brothers in Israel have achieved the same maturation without having to undergo such an intense crisis. For them it has been a long and painful process that has taught them many things and made them forget many others. Now they will once more have to connect themselves with parts of themselves that were suspended and put to sleep. Now they will have to rewrite themselves as citizens with equal rights and responsibilities, to redeem themselves from apathy and foreignness, to learn to breathe with both lungs.

A solution to the problem of the Palestinians in the occupied territories will certainly mitigate the dilemma of identity of the Palestinians in Israel. But it would be an error to wait until the peace process is completed. The final end of the occupation is liable to be put off for many long years, and precisely for this reason, the peace talks should consider the special circumstances of the Palestinians in Israel. Any agreement made with the Arabs should be complete and final, ending absolutely all border and land disputes, all claims and ambiguities between the two peoples.

There will be those who will be alarmed by this proposal — why are you giving them ideas, at the height of the negotiations! What is open to question here — after all, we’re talking about Israeli citizens! Are you proposing to concede the power you achieved years ago? Nevertheless, hundreds of hours of talks strengthen my sense that now is the time to open discussion on the question of the Palestinians in Israel, and that it is in Israel’s manifest interest to do this now, when we still have all our cards in hand. We should not give in to the urge for denial, to the faith that things will solve themselves — they won’t.

Many Palestinians in Israel, including those who have come to terms with their Israeli citizenship, see Yassir Arafat as their representative. Toufiq Ziad, a member of the Knesset and mayor of Nazareth, said at a gathering in his city on November 15, 1991: “Shamir did not represent us at the Madrid conference and he will not represent us in the future. We say with all sincerity”—and here Ziad turned to the head of the Palestinian delegation to Madrid—“that we, the Palestinian Arab public in Israel, are represented by you.” There are also reports that the Arab delegations to the peace conference prepared a special file on the Arab citizens of Israel, and they may bring it up at a later date.

If peace comes to the region, the ties between the two parts of the Palestinian people will become stronger. It may well be that those who live in Israel will carry — at the end of the process — Palestinian passports, and will vote for the Palestinian parliament. The situation then will be no less complex than the present one, and only truly daring thinking — not that of a people besieged, not defensive, Diaspora, minority thinking — can create a dynamic system of relations that will gradually release the partners in Israeliness from the mentality of conflict.

It is evident to everyone that Israel, which cannot raise the money necessary to absorb mass immigration, cannot — and apparently does not want to — set aside the necessary funds for improving the lot of the Palestinians within it. It is not hard to imagine the results of this discrimination. An explosion by the Palestinians in Israel over ongoing discrimination and humiliation will be complex and dangerous when an independent Palestinian entity exists. But if the issue of the Palestinians in Israel is raised in the framework of the peace talks, and Israel’s objective difficulties in solving this problem are presented, one may certainly hope that the peace treaty will also include economic support from the United States, Europe, and the Middle East that will vault Israel’s Arab society into a position of equal opportunity with the Jewish community, and will magnify the chances that all Israeli citizens can live a life of peace and satisfaction — a fully realized life, not only teeth-gritting defense of the boundaries of its existence.