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

The terrorist found a seat on the bus. Near him sat a student on her way to Safed College — Yassera Bakri, also from Bi’ane and from the same hamula (clan) as the young men who had assisted the terrorist. She was talking to a girlfriend in Arabic; nobody knows whether the young man knew Bakri personally or simply understood from overhearing her that she was not a Jew. Nor is it known whether she recognized him — he had visited Bi’ane on a number of occasions. In any case, he leaned over and whispered that she should get off the bus right away because “something bad is about to happen.” She immediately rose and disembarked with her friend. They stood at the stop for a moment, watching the bus drive away. Yassera Bakri had a mobile phone with her. Perhaps she wondered whether or not to report the incident to the police. You could write an entire novel about that moment and what went through her mind. She didn’t call the police. She and her friend hailed a cab and, a few seconds later, saw the bus blow up in the distance. Nine passengers were killed on the spot, ten were mortally wounded, and several dozen received less serious injuries. Among the dead and hurt were soldiers and civilians. The dead included a Druze student, also from Safed College.

The Israeli Jewish population, weary and jaded by bombings, was furious. As usual, rabble-rousers accused the Palestinian citizens of Israel of disloyalty. Others stressed that an entire group of people could not be branded as criminal because of the actions of a few individuals. Leaders of the Israeli Arab public were quick to condemn the attack categorically, and in Bi’ane itself there were Arabs who demanded — in a rather strange display of allegiance to the Jewish state’s penal code — that Israel demolish the homes of the young men who had assisted the terrorist, just as it demolishes the homes of terrorists from the occupied territories.

As for Yassera Bakri — the Israeli-Jewish media and public accused her of treachery, and most of the anger and frustration over the attack was directed at her. She was suspended from Safed College and is, as I write, on trial for failing to prevent a crime.

We cannot know whether Yassera Bakri could have prevented the bombing had she called the police. The terrorist was already on the bus, and his finger was on the detonator. Neither can we know what might have happened differently had she screamed out a warning when he whispered to her on the bus. Maybe she would have been killed as well. It is very difficult to know how anyone else would have behaved in her place. She seems to have acted with the dulled senses that fear can cause, and within a kind of paralysis brought on by stress and by the conflicting loyalties that battled within her for those few seconds. In a certain way, her story illustrates the trap in which all her compatriots who live in Israel find themselves. Any step she might have taken, any movement to one side or the other, would have sealed her fate in the eyes of Israeli Jews on the one side, and of the Palestinians in the territories on the other.

Relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel are now at a nadir. The country’s Palestinian minority has not, as a general rule, copied the violent example of its brethrens’ uprising in the occupied territories. But even its very limited involvement in the Intifada, mostly in the form of passive support, has been perceived as treason by the Jewish majority. The Palestinians in Israel, and those in the territories, have worked hard to keep their causes separate. This is partly so that Israel will have no excuse for treating its Arab minority more aggressively, and partly because the Israeli Arabs do not want to risk losing the gains, partial but real, that they have made over the years. Nevertheless, eight terror cells were uncovered in the Israeli Arab community in 2000, and in 2002 the number was twenty-seven. During the last two years, thirty-two Israeli citizens have been killed in terror attacks committed by Palestinian Israeli citizens. In October 2000, during turbulent demonstrations by Palestinian Israelis, the Israeli police killed thirteen Israeli Arab civilians. The good commercial relations that had prevailed between Jews and Arabs were seriously damaged by these riots. Jews declare that they no longer trust their neighbors, and that they wish to “punish” them for making common and violent cause with the Palestinians in the territories. Government ministries have greatly reduced their funding for the Arab sector. Since October 2000, many Jewish members of the Knesset have adopted the practice of walking out of the chamber each time an Arab member ascends the podium. Right-wing parties work openly to encourage Israel’s Palestinian citizens to emigrate. The minister of National Infrastructures, Efi Eitam, has even termed the country’s Palestinian citizens “a cancer in the body of the state,” and a very popular bumper sticker reads: “No Arabs, No Terrorist Attacks.”

As the Palestinian citizens are excluded from — and exclude themselves from — civil participation, they become more vocal in their demand to be recognized as an autonomous national minority. They also challenge Zionism’s most fundamental principle — that the State of Israel should have an explicitly Jewish character. As the Arabs’ demands have become more vocal, more and more Israeli Jews are calling for the deportation or transfer of the Palestinian population. Each side is treading brazenly on the other side’s sorest point, the other’s wound and nightmare.

The dizzy spiral continues. As the rift widens, the individual and general condition of the Israeli Arabs worsens. They become more profoundly alienated from the state and their economic well-being declines. The unemployment rates in Arab villages, towns, and cities are the highest in Israel; half of the children living below the poverty line are Arab. Perhaps as a result of this, out of despair and a sense that they have nothing to lose, the sleepers on a wire are awakening. They are making their voices heard. They are present, and are breaking with growing force out of the state of suspended animation they have lived in for decades. Israel’s homegrown fundamentalist Islamic groups are gaining strength and intensifying their rhetoric against the Jewish state. The same is true of the Arab members of the Knesset. They present Israeli democracy with challenges that other countries, with deeper and older democratic traditions than Israel’s, would have difficulty facing. Knesset member Azmi Bishara, for example, made a visit to Syria, and in a speech there expressed understanding for the actions of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia, which from its bases in southern Lebanon fires missiles at Israeli army outposts and civilian settlements. Another Arab member of the Knesset sent a letter to the president of Syria and called for “Arab unity in order to put an end to Israel’s criminal actions.” Knesset member Ahmad Tibi, one of the most prominent Arab politicians, served for years (including during the current Intifada) as a personal adviser to Yassir Arafat. (This is comparable to a member of the United States House of Representatives serving as a personal adviser to Saddam Hussein at the same time that President Bush is preparing to go to war with Iraq.)

Many of Israel’s inhabitants believe that the country is now fighting for its life. Under these circumstances, it is far from easy for Israel to handle its complex relations with its Palestinian minority. About a month ago, during the campaign leading up to the January 28, 2003, elections, the Central Elections Commission decided to disqualify Tibi and Bishara from seeking reelection, and to disqualify Bishara’s party as a whole. The decision, which expressed great alarm and vulnerability, as well as a desire to silence a whole community, won huge support among the Jewish population. The Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the disqualifications was a defense not only of the Arab population, but also of Israel’s democratic character.