"Were you ever here?" asks writer and columnist Odeh Bisharat as we meet at a café in the shopping mall at the entrance to Nazareth.
"No," I answer indifferently. I had been hoping for a slightly more authentic setting for our conversation, but the heavy tourist traffic over the Sukkot holiday made the mall a more practical option.
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"Because this is paradise," Bisharat says, turning down the snobbery. "Jews and Arabs enjoying leisure time together."
At first, I find it hard to believe that the former secretary general of the Jewish-Arab communist party Hadash is so excited about a temple of capitalism realizing the vision of brotherly love.
"I'm not the communist I used to be," he will go on to say when we discuss his childhood in the shadow of what he describes at length in his new, second book, "Dunya," which was recently published in Hebrew.
"Shimon Peres once wrote to me that my first book reminded him of Shalom Aleichem's stories"
A dreamy young woman from the northern Israel town of Zatunia vanishes one morning, and her disappearance shakes up her relatives. The residents of the village organize themselves to help with the searches, and public institutions and functionaries join the community operation in a social tidal wave that recalls the characters in Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon's "Blaumilch Canal." The same kind of keen humor follows the second story line, which tells the story of the families of the protagonists starting from 1948. Bisharat creates a village in which everything is picturesque, a kind of Arab shtetl in the Galilee. The descriptions are tongue-in-cheek, almost comical.
"Shimon Peres once wrote to me that my first book, 'The Streets of Zatunia,' reminded him of the village Katrielivka in Shalom Aleichem's stories," Bisharat says. "It's such a provincial little town, Zatunia, but it feels like it's the center of the universe and deals with the biggest issues of all."
"The Streets of Zatunia" (2007, and translated from Arabic into Hebrew and Finnish), a kind of political satire, like Dunya, throws the village's residents into a storm of events in the same imaginary village. But this time, Bisharat brings the residents back to their past, to the days when they took in the refugees from the nearby villages in 1948, were living under Israeli military rule, and found work building a nearby Jewish city. Bisharat himself was born in 1956 to a family that was uprooted from nearby Ma'alul and found a home in the village of Yafiah, near Nazareth.
"The residents of Ma'alul who were uprooted didn't even have time to grieve. Only six months later, when they had kind of gotten on their feet in Yafiah, did they have time, and the women went out to sit on a hilltop and rend their garments, and throw dust on themselves, and weep."
Q: What does that generation mean to you?
"For me, they're heroes. That's the generation of my father and grandfather, whose lives changed in one chilling moment in 1948. I don't think that a week before it happened they realized that they wouldn't be there any longer. Instead of crying, or whining, they got up, built, taught their children, and lived in huts and then built homes, all while the government was against them, all with the horrible feeling that the country didn't want them, and as their relatives were being tossed out beyond the border."
A web of absurdities
Bisharat defines 1948 as a "tragedy of immense proportions."
"It wasn't a great honor to ask Ben-Gurion for Israeli citizenship ... but it was a badge of honor that they had stayed on their land"
"Out of every five people, four were deported. Do you get it? You live in a family of five, and your four brothers aren't here anymore, and you're left under the sponsorship, the leadership, and the charity of those who deported them. Not living with your uncle, but with the person who kicked them out. [Israeli Arab writer and former MK] Emil Habibi used the phrase, 'We were left like orphans on the table of the evildoers.' The paradox created even more paradoxes in Arab society, between it and the government, and between it and Jewish society, and amid all that mess people had successes. And one of the things I'm trying to do here is show sympathy for those people."
Q: More than sympathy. Sometimes it seems as if you're really swept up in nostalgia for that period, which was ultimately a moment of defeat, no?
"A lot of people who read the book saw, like you said, the nostalgic side of it. A real burst of nostalgia. Listen, those were really, really tough times, but also very beautiful. In the end, the Arab population in Israel went through a web of absurdities. On one hand, the regime deported most of our people, but on the other those that remained wanted ID cards from the people who had expelled their brothers. In absolute terms, it wasn't a great honor to ask for Israeli ID cards from Ben-Gurion, who among other things put the Arabs under military rule, but it was a badge of honor that they had stayed on their land."
"Ben-Gurion once said something along the lines of, 'the Palestinians don't have patriotism but they have a love for the land.' The existence of being only in your own home and village is something imprinted on the Palestinians. So yes, sometimes you're forced to do something bitter to avoid more bitterness. Even the mukhtars, who supposedly cooperated with the military regime, eventually came around to thinking about the good of their people. They knew we couldn't beat our heads against a wall forever."
Bisharat stresses that it's important to him to clarify these insights for the young generation of Arabs in Israel, who he says "are getting caught up in big slogans and see any activity that doesn't align with those slogan as defeatist.
"[But] what could be more defeatist than accepted an Israeli ID card in 1948? There are two approaches: you can close yourself off and hate and see everything as black, or you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even in the toughest context, see the beautiful things."
Q: On the other hand, you can't understand the story and the characters without the huge trauma.
"True, but it's not a book about destruction and tears. I don't cry over the ruins, 'Al Atlal' as they're called in Arabic. Unfortunately, Palestinian literature – maybe because it had no choice – takes place in the context of the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, of clashes with the state, and under the shadow of the victims. It virtually doesn't address the Palestinian people outside the context of the national struggle. But the Palestinians have another context, an internal one: the fights, the internal rivalries, the status of women, making a living, everyday life, experiences of growing up. I don't think about Palestine when I go to the office, and I don't ponder the struggle for liberation when I'm raising my kids. I live the everyday reality. And somehow all these aspects were bottled up and thrown away, under the claim that now is the time for struggle only."
Bisharat says that the focus on the Palestinian struggle has obfuscated any focus on wonderful experiences - "How people fought and how they made up, and how they built homes, and got married, and went to school. The experience of village life, which is bustling, loving, humorous. These treasures have disappeared, and it's important to me to stress that Palestinian-hood exists fully, even without the struggle. Incidentally, that approach played into the hands of those who didn't want to recognize our identity and our existence. So no, we don't exist only in that political context, but also as ourselves, as a cultural and national unit."
'We'll manage without the billions'
Bisharat was raised and educated in Yafiah. He regularly publishes op-ed pieces in Arabic-language news outlets, and for the past decade has had a regular weekly column in Haaretz. He grew up in the communist youth movement and continued his political activity at university. The communist party plays a major role in his personal biography, but also in the story of the characters in Dunya.
"There's plenty to say about it, and I'm not the communist I used to be," he explains. "But I can't take away the beautiful thing it instilled in me from childhood, from kindergarten, that Jews and Arabs are not enemies. We were enemies of the military regime, but not the Jews. We opposed the government, Ben-Gurion, but not the Jews. There is also the fact that we ran around together, Jews and Arabs, and organized joint activities and had parties together."
Q: But in your book the party's role as a channel of opposition to the military rule is stressed - it was an alternative to obedience or even cooperation with the government.
"True. In one sense, the communist party told us that we here in our little village were connected to Nicaragua, to Vietnam, to Algeria, and to Yemen – that we were part of the big socialist word, the movement of liberation. As closed off as we were, through the party we were open to the world. And that gave us strength. My family says that when I was in first grade, I read out loud, without understanding, the common slogan at the time: 'De Gaulle, go home, Algeria is free!' True, we were under military rule and at any moment they could have come to round us up, all 150,000 of us and put us in prisoners, but we felt that we were bigger."
"Palestinian-hood exists fully, even without the struggle"
Five decades have passed since the military regime was in place, and Bisharat still lives in Yafiah, now with his wife, Suher, a PhD in biology, and their daughter Hala, who is in the 10th grade. His two older sons, Khaled, 25, and Yazid, 23, are university graduates and they both live in central Israel, one in Ramat Hasharon and the other in Ramat Aviv. That's a sign that gives Bisharat a reason for optimism.
"Without propagandizing for Netanyahu, 10 years ago there were 400 Arabs in high-tech. Now there are 7,000," he says.
Still, his second novel has come out at a fraught time in terms of Jewish-Arab relations in Israel: attempts to put cameras in polling stations in Arab communities; the Joint Arab List endorsing Blue and White leader Benny Gantz; and the war on violence in the Arab sector.
Q: Do you think about Jewish readers when you write, what role the book can play at a time like this?
"I wrote the book in Arabic, so I'm not sure I had Jewish readers in mind. Ask me when the next book comes out," he laughs.
"But I do understand how the book can give Jewish readers a more complex picture. You can't just show people in their final forms. That's shallow. You need to address how things happened, how they developed. You can't just come and say of the Arabs in Israel, 'It's a violent society,' and that's it. You need to ask how a society like that becomes violent. You also need to look at the Jews, what is happing in Jewish society. You can't merely call it a militaristic society, for example. You need to look at its history."
From Islamists to liberals
In his column in Haaretz, Bisharat takes positions that are very critical of the government, especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nevertheless, our conversation started with the "paradise" of Jews and Arabs at the mall together. I point out that this is a vision that came to fruition under a right-wing government.
"I asked once and I'm asking now – what's preferable? Getting 15 billion shekels [a decision made by the government elected in 1992] or that Netanyahu stop inciting. As far as I'm concerned, we can manage without the 15 billion, but it's very difficult to handle the incitement. Obviously, there are some who will tell you, 'Travel abroad, work opportunities, why not vote for him?' But incitement against Arabs has reached levels we've never seen. When he accuses them of voter fraud in the election, then in that horrible post says that Arabs want to kill Jews. With incitement like that, everything could turn into a nightmare for the two peoples."
Q: I'm not sure I agree with your theory of incitement. Ultimately, Netanyahu is saying, 'I have a problem with the political stances of the Arab parties, and I know that when the Arabs go vote in large numbers, it will tip the scales in favor of the Left.' He is warning right-wing voters about an awakening in the rival political camp. He's right, but most importantly, he discusses their political stances, not their race or religion.
"That's worse, what you're saying right now. He's telling his voters, 'I'm presenting such a bad line for Arabs that it's clear they'll never vote for me.' In other words, the Likud DNA is anti-Arab. It's built-in racism, and this time it's being said with a flourish. Without apology or shame. It's similar to what they said about Jews in Europe. I think that anyone who has nothing to say to 2 million Arabs should take a look at himself. But as an incorrigible optimist, I think that his conduct will wake up a lot of Jews and maybe that will lead to more alliances between Jews and Arabs.
Q: You understand that a lot of Jews listen to messages like your or even [Joint Arab List leader] Ayman Odeh's, but look at the political expressions by the Joint Arab List, some of whose members are identified with statements and actions and in the best case can be said to challenge the things that Jews in Israel hold sacred.
"I'm familiar with the criticism. Why do all the Arabs join together on one list – the Islamists and the communists and the liberals and the nationalists? Because Netanyahu's policies don't distinguish between the Islamist or the liberal. Any minority, when they feel threatened, need to band together. But you should know that those parties, even Balad, even the Islamist movement, will always be on the pragmatic side at every watershed moment. For example, right now, if the choice is Netanyahu or Gantz, some of them are saying "no," but in the test of truth, they'll vote with Gantz."
Q: Even Balad?
"Even Balad, I think, and it's already happened. MK Azmi Bishara from Balad's vote tipped the scales in favor of the evacuation-compensation law without which [Arik] Sharon's disengagement plan would have been in serious trouble."
"Anyone who has nothing to say to 2 million Arabs should take a look at himself"
Q: Will Arab society in Israel one day be able to accept its existence as an ethnic minority in the Jewish state?
"All that propaganda, that the Arabs are supposedly isolating themselves, is a lie. Take the current battle against violence. What's the main slogan? That we want the government to treat us equally. We want the government to intervene. Can there be anything more civil than that demand? The opposite – it's the state that is failing in its role to defend and protect its citizens. The government is the one who neglected its responsibility. The nation-state law, too – what was the government telling the Arabs with that law? You're not equal citizens, you're outside the bounds of citizenship.
"There are citizens to whom the country belongs, and citizens to whom it doesn't. Could there be a clearer sign of the Arabs' desire to integrate into the life of the state than their opposition to the nation-state law? It's just that we mean an Israel that respects all its citizens, and doesn't exclude some of them. So the question should be addressed to the government, not the Arabs. Does the government want us to be part of it, or not? It's a test for the state, not for us."
Which leftists suffer more?
Bisharat came to literary writing relatively late in life, at the end of his 50s, when he published "The Streets of Zatunia." Dunya was published in Arabic four years ago. Last year, his third novel, which has yet to be translated into Hebrew, came out. It also takes place in Zatunia, but is more tragic than his first two. Bisharat also recently published a children's book, "Don't Steal my Turn."
"For me, literature isn't political, it isn't a position paper," he underscores.
"When Ben-Gurion wrote his memoirs, he knew that history was watching and he wrote carefully. I don't write that way. I want to express myself and expose myself more. You might have noticed that the book also deals with very difficult aspects of Arab culture."
Q: It that welcomed?
"When I published 'The Streets of Zatunia,' some people said, 'You're washing our dirty laundry in public.' They liked it in Arabic, but they were less happy that it was translated into Hebrew. I told them, 'If the [dirty] laundry stays inside the house, it will stink and the ones who suffer will be the people living in the house.' 'The Streets of Zatunia' didn't cause Jewish readers to be put off by Arab society. It created empathy.
"In literature, it's the internal discourse in a society that the other side identifies with. For example, when I read Amos Oz, I say, that character in his book is like me, that woman speaks to me. You, too, when you read Dunya – you identify with the woman and the young boy. Even when you're on the other side. I think that's the power of literature – it's not a confrontational discourse, so it brings different peoples closer. When you expose things, you get sympathy. Thank God, we are living in a time when it's possible to expose our weaknesses, our flaws, without feeling as if we're doing something wrong."
Q: I think you have plenty to talk about with the Jewish writers and filmmakers who encounter the same response from a Jewish audience.
"In that context, I think that the Jewish Left suffers much more than I do. Because if I take a stance against Netanyahu, I have the backing of my people, whereas an intellectual on the Jewish Left, if he opposes the war, for example, is by himself. So I admire their courage. I say the same thing to people on the Right, who claim that criticism from the Left smears Israel in the world. The opposite – Israel is strong because it has a critical society. If the spirit of criticism didn't run deep, society would find itself going backward."
