[In the following essay, Coffin discusses representations of Arabs and Arab-Jewish relations in Israeli literature.]

The encounter between the Arab residents and the Jewish settlers does not resemble an epic or a western, but is, perhaps, closest to a Greek tragedy. That is to say, the clash between justice and justice . . . and like ancient tragedies, there is no hope for happy reconciliation on the basis of some magic formula.

This vision of the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Israel is that of Amos Oz, one of Israel's leading fiction writers and, like many of its writers and intellectuals, a political activist as well. While writers may not have a significant effect on political life in Israel, they have for the most part been outspoken social critics and have fulfilled an important role in reflecting the central concerns of the society. Even writers who have tried to disengage themselves from national politics and focus on more general aspects of the human condition have been unable to avoid the immediate moral issues resulting from the Arab-Jewish confrontations. Israeli literature has always expressed a great yearning for coexistence; at the same time it has evidenced a growing frustration and sense of pessimism. After three decades, the "magic formula" Oz refers to seems more illusive than ever.

While not the only major theme claiming the attention of Modern Hebrew writers, the Arab-Jewish encounter occupies an important position even in the earliest literary expressions of the Jewish community in Eretz Yisrael. Modern Hebrew literature had its beginnings in the late eighteenth century in Central Europe; it is, however, almost entirely a literature of this century, written for the most part in the Near East. It can be divided into four major phases characterized both by shifting moral concerns and changing modes of literary expression. These modulations of emphasis and style can be seen in the treatment of the Arab presence. The idealized portrayal of Arabs as romantic or exotic Oriental figures early in this century is succeeded by a scarcely less sentimental treatment in the social-realist fiction of the 1940s and early 1950s. Writers of the 1950s and 1960s replace or supplement this approach by a parabolic mode in which profound feelings of guilt and hostility find expression in symbolic narratives. After the 1973 war newer works tried to give even fuller representation to Arabs, both as individuals and as members of various communities, as if the art of description could effect the sympathetic understanding each side has found so elusive. A closer look at sample texts from each historical phase will suggest the somber evolution of this crucial motif.

Jewish authors exhibit divergent attitudes in their early portrayals of Arabs: on the one hand, a strong attraction to the exotic strangers, and on the other, misgivings about the injustice manifest in their semi-feudal society. Traditional customs, often tribally based, provide insights into an attractively different culture for both fictionists and folklorists, but writers find it difficult to accept the systematic violations of what they perceive to be individual rights. They see the common man, the Arab fellah ("farmer") exploited by a class of landlords, the Arab woman denied the freedom to determine her own fate, and the children robbed of their childhood and made to join the labor force at an early age. The preoccupation with various aspects of the local scene follows not only from observation but also from major concerns of early Jewish settlers: the need to reestablish connections with the ancient biblical past and with the land, and the desire to build a new society based on the principles of equality and justice—a desire that prompted identification with the oppressed.

Moshe Smilansky (1874-1953), while a minor figure in Modern Hebrew literature, is nonetheless well known for his fictional treatment of interactions between early Jewish settlers and their Arab neighbors. Smiiansky was a farmer as well as a writer; he employed Arab as well as Jewish laborers on his land, learned to speak Arabic well, and familiarized himself with Arab customs and traditions. Under the pen name of Hawaja Musa (Mister Musa), the name by which he was known to Arab friends and neighbors as well as to his laborers, he published short stories depicting episodes of forbidden love, tragedies of arranged marriage, the heroism of young Bedouins, and tribal feuds involving blood vengeance as well as the conflict of generations. While exposing the Jewish reader to Arab culture, as Smilansky came to know it, the stories also highlight the problems to which later writers would return.

Smilansky addressed himself, in a more realistic vein, to encounters between Arabs and Jews at the beginning of this century, drawing on his own daily experience. One such encounter is described in "Latifa." The young Arab girl Latifa works in the fields of the narrator, a young Jewish farmer. She yearns for a life of her own, for closer contact with the young farmer, but is bound by tradition to marry a man she does not love, chosen by her father. She is destined to live in misery and servitude, like many women in her society whose marriages were arranged by their families. Latifa and the narrator are attracted to each other; they react both as individuals and as representatives of their respective cultures. Latifa is endowed by Smilansky with romantic and exotic attributes. She evokes the biblical image of women drawing water at the well, chief among them the matriarch Rebecca.

If you never saw Latifa's eyes—you don't know how beautiful eyes can be. , . . A young girl of fourteen, upright and agile, in a blue dress. One end of a white kerchief covered her head, while the other end fell on her shoulders. . . . Her eyes were lovely—large, black, flaming. The pupils sparkled with happiness. . . . Once I was riding to the field on my small grey ass. At the well I met Latifa, a pitcher of water on her head.

While Latifa comes to represent all that is attractive about Arab culture, her father, Sheikh Surbaji, represents rejectionist attitudes. A meeting between the narrator and the Sheikh reveals the intolerance and hostility toward Jews of Arabs who refuse to acknowledge any possibility for coexistence.

He was an old man with a fine white beard, a tall tarbush on his head, riding on a spirited white mare that pranced and curveted beneath him—he gave greetings to the laborers, who on their side all bowed to him with great humility and became silent. At me he threw an ill-tempered look, and he greeted me with a snarl in his voice. . . . There was no love lost between the Colony [the Jewish settlement] and the Sheikh, who bore a fanatic hatred toward Jews.

Latifa's miserable fate, and that of her Arab sisters, derive from Arab traditions that contrast to the narrator's humane values. An intimate conversation between the two young people reveals these differences.

—My father wants to give me to the Sheikh of Agar's son.

—And you?

—Sooner would I die. . . . Hawaja, is it true that your folk take but one?

—But one, Latifa.

—And your folk do not beat their women?

—No. How shall one beat the woman whom he loves and who loves him?

—Among you the girls take those they love?

—Assuredly.

—While us they sell like beasts of burden. . . .

Latifa is forced to marry Sheikh Agar's son, "a small and ugly fellow," as one of the Arab workers in the story describes him.

The story ends with an encounter between Latifa and the narrator years later. Latifa's spirit has been broken, but though "she has grown old. . . . her eyes still retained traces of their former brightness." The understated final lines speak to the sadness of her condition.

—Hawaja Musa has taken a wife?

—Yes, Latifa. . . .

I called my wife out. Latifa looked at her for a long time. There were tears in her eyes. . . .

I have not seen Latifa since then.

Sheikh Surbaji has triumphed, and with him the aspects of Arab society which accentuate the differences between the two cultures. In "Latifa" Smilansky not only mourns the fate of an individual woman, but also the failure of two societies to find a common ground.

Among other writers of pre-State days, Yitzhaq Shami (1889-1949) and Yehuda Burla (1886-1969), both of whom were native born and had full command of Arabic, included interesting portrayals of Arabs in their stories. Both Shami and Burla represented in their works many of the local Oriental communities, including Arabic- and Ladino-speaking Jews as well as Arabs. They thus were able to give important insights to the growing Hebrew reading population of European background and helped bridge gaps among various sectors of the population.

The absence of serious treatment of this subject in the fiction of the two major authors of the pre-State period, S. J. Agnon (1888-1972) and J. H. Brenner (1881-1921) is notable and at the same time understandable. Their concern was mainly with the Jewish community itself. Agnon was preoccupied with providing continuity for Hebrew literature, addressing himself mainly to traditional Jewish themes. Brenner's principal concern was with Jewish struggles toward the realization of the early Zionist dream and its socialist aspirations. Neither could speak Arabic and quite likely neither felt that he could effectively portray Arabs as major figures in works of fiction. Brenner, who was killed by Arabs in 1921, left an interesting account of an encounter with local Arabs shortly before his death. "We Are Brothers" is colored by Brenner's socialist ideals. Though he was rebuffed by some segments of Arab society, he felt a strong sense of kinship and brotherhood with what he perceived to be the oppressed classes of Arab society. While it seemed that there was no way of achieving a dialogue between the two national groups, Brenner, like many other socialist ideologists, preferred to believe that class bonds could bridge the gap. Jewish laborers, rather than all Jews, would eventually find common ground with Arab laborers, rather than all Arabs; shared class interests would overcome national concerns.

In "We Are Brothers" Brenner tells of walking through orange groves near Jaffa and passing a group of Arabs seated on a front porch. The group was composed of "an effendi in the company of two elderly neighbors and a young fellow of about twenty with a cap. . . . I greeted them; they did not answer. So I went on. As I happened to glance back I noticed by their look that their silence was a purposeful and mean one. The young fellow had already stretched himself upon the ground and cast about a triumphant expression, as if to say: We didn't answer that yahud ["Jew" in Arabic]." Later he meets with a young Arab worker, "only a lad of thirteen years." His sympathy for the worker, similar to Smilansky's for Latifa, is partly a response to the boy's friendly greeting; it also reflects a feeling that the two of them share a common adversary—the cadre of Arab landlords and their representatives symbolized in this essay by the group on the front porch. Though Brenner does not know much Arabic and the young worker knows no Hebrew, the two manage to interact, overcoming language barriers. Able to elicit basic information from the young man about himself, Brenner is distressed that he is unable to communicate his sense that the young Arab is being exploited by the effendis.

Just then I reproached myself, rather severely, for not having learned to speak Arabic. Oh, if I could have only conversed with you better—my orphan worker! My young comrade, whether it is true or not what the scholars say about your being my blood relation, I feel responsible for you. I should have opened your eyes and let you enjoy some human kindness!

In his closing lines Brenner expresses longingly the aspirations which have been reiterated by many writers since: "We want only a soulful relationship . . . today .. . for centuries to come .. . for many, many days . . . with the meaning of being brothers, comrades."

Brenner saw not just an Arab-Jewish conflict, but a society ripe for changes to be brought about by Jews and Arabs alike. He was aware how profoundly his interpretation of local matters differed from the one probably held by Arab workers. He allowed that these workers may not share his views of the future and that he could have been wrong in including them in his future dreams. He concluded his essay by admitting that "maybe this"—the socio-economic conditions of the Arab population and their internal political system—"isn't even any of our business."

The political conflict between Arabs and Jews came to a head with the 1948 War of Independence, which followed the Second World War so closely that the survival of the Jewish population seemed at stake. The war presented, however, not only problems of survival, but also major moral questions: the Jewish community for the first time found itself in the position of being a major participant in a war, and therefore vulnerable to genuine guilt for its consequences. Most of the writers of the Generation of 1948, in their early twenties, had taken part in the war and the establishment of the new state, but they were not accustomed to the new role in which history had cast them. Though it was perceived as a just war, this perception did not minimize the fact that as in any war, just or unjust, defensive or offensive, human lives were taken and civilian populations were victimized. Raised on national as well as humanistic values, these writers, of a generation seen as heroic, felt ambivalence rather than heroism. Benjamin Tammuz, a member ofthat generation, summarized these reactions discursively.

. . . in the absence of answers a certain vague and undefined ambivalent attitude prevailed, yet typified by a single feature: deep pangs of guilt.

—We are guilty because, for two thousand years, we have tolerated the ignominy of hatred and persecution in the Diaspora.

—We are guilty, because we reacted either as lambs brought to the slaughter or, through assimilation, renounced our identity in return for economic or social profit.

—We are guilty, because we returned to the land of our forefathers though we lost their Faith.

—We are guilty, because we expel the Muslim Fellah who has been tilling his land.

These lines demonstrate not only the intensity of this guilt but also the contradictions embodied in it. On the one hand, the guilt has been generated by two thousand years of being victims, accentuated by the events of the Holocaust: this situation made it imperative to take one's fate into one's own hands and fight for survival. On the other hand, the military victory put the Jewish community in the new position of perceiving itself not only as intended victims, but also as potential victimizers; defending itself, but also expelling civilian populations from villages and homesteads. As Tammuz points out,

In 1948, at the close of a year of heavy sacrifices when, out of the country's Jewish community of six hundred and thirty thousand, the death toll was ten thousand, the weight of guilt in Hebrew literature reached its climax.

This sense of guilt provides the context of early literary responses to the war. There is little interest in Arabs as aggressors, as active participants in the armed conflict; rather the concern which finds expression in literature involves the Arabs who suffered the consequences of the war, captives of ambivalent captors.

The best-known expositor of this theme is S. Yizhar (born 1918), by no coincidence the nephew of Moshe Smilansky. Yizhar wrote a number of short stories as well as a long novel on the subject of the war. His stories "The Prisoner" and "Hirbet Hiz'ah" (1948-49) remain controversial even today. Speaking at a time of heavy losses for the Jewish community, Yizhar forced his readers to examine the war and all its ramifications not only from a national point of view, but from a human point of view as well. The Arabs in these didactic stories are often depicted in a rather shallow, stereotyped manner; the intent being to summarize, to sketch, and to generalize. They are not presented realistically but one-dimensionally, to sharpen Yizhar's point. The Israelis too are flat figures, often no more than caricatures.

"The Prisoner" was written in 1948 and first published in Molad, a monthly sponsored by Mapai, the leading Labor party; time and place of publication are significant as an index to the openness of political discussion. Such literature of radical self-criticism was not only allowed, but was actually expected. "The Prisoner" tells of an Israeli army unit taking an Arab shepherd captive during the 1948 War. Yizhar opens the story with an idyllic description of Arab shepherds and their flocks. The scene ironically recalls the Jewish patriarchs:

On the plains and in the valleys flocks of sheep were wandering; on the hilltops, dim, human forms, one here and one there, in the shade of olive trees. .. . In the midst of the distant fields shepherds were calmly leading their flocks with the tranquil peace of fields and mountains and a kind of easy unconcern—the unconcern of good days when there was yet no evil in the world to forewarn of other evil things to come. In the distance quiet flocks were grazing, flocks from the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The Israelis in contrast are portrayed as a group of outsiders, not only as a military presence intruding on the pastoral world, but also as an urban presence, inherently evil, encroaching on the creative world of the past. The narrator finds before him "the kind of world that fills you with peace, while a lust for good, fertile earth urged one to return to back-bending work." Yet the innocent spirit of place, a shepherd, is placed under arrest.

More than a story of an Arab victimized by circumstances, "The Prisoner" surveys a gamut of Israeli reactions toward the encounter. Jews are cast in the role of hunters; the role of the hunted now belongs to the Arab. A new dimension has entered the Israeli construct of reality, and it is here tested in the most extreme of fictional situations. At one point the captive is portrayed as an object of pity: one against many, caught because there was a need for "something concrete to point to", a simple, unthreatening figure of "A man about forty, with a moustache drooping at the corners of his mouth, a silly nose, slightly gaping lips, and eyes . . . but these were bound with his kaffiyah [Arab headdress] so that he could not see, although what he might have seen I don't know." On the way to the military post, for a moment, the captive is described as having become part of the group.

Two corporals and a sergeant came, . . . took the prisoner, and led him away. Unable to see, he innocently leaned on the arm which the corporal had just as innocently extended in support. He even spoke a few words to guide the prisoner's groping steps. And there was a moment when it seemed as if both of them were laboring together peacefully to overcome the things that hindered their way and help each other as if they went together, a man and another man close together.

The interrogation scene that follows is described with little sympathy for the military. The soldiers threaten the shepherd with a beating unless he cooperates. In their eyes he becomes the symbol of an intransigent enemy. Unable to get information out of the prisoner, the soldiers send him off to headquarters, with the narrator as sentry holding the official order. At this point in the story Yizhar's narrator becomes a split consciousness, engaging in internal dialogue, raising questions not only about the nature of the "enemy" and his ultimate fate, but also about his own responsibilities.

This man here at your feet, his life, his well-being, his home, three souls, the whole fabric of life, have somehow found their way into the hollow of your hand. . . . The abducted man, the stolen sheep, those souls in the mountain village . . . suddenly, you are the master of their fate. . . . Stop the jeep and let him go, and the verdict will be changed.

The sentry is faced with a choice: he could free the prisoner, or follow the order given to him.

This time you can't escape behind "I'm a soldier" or "It's an order" or "If they catch me, what will they do?" . . . You are naked now, facing your duty, and it is only yours.

Another voice answers:

I can't. I'm nothing but a messenger. What's more, there's a war, and this man is from the other side. Perhaps he is a victim of the intrigues of his people, but after all, I am forbidden and have not the power to free him. What would happen if we all started to set prisoners free? Who knows, maybe he really knows something important and only puts on that silly face?

The story of this encounter of two human lives, on two sides of the fence, ends with a set of questions which remain unanswered.

And yet behind us .. . in the misty evening coming over the mountains, there, maybe, there is a different feeling, a gnawing sadness, the sadness of the "who-knows?" of shameful impotence, the "whoknows?" that is in the heart of a waiting woman, the "who-knows?" of fate, a single, very personal "who-knows?" and still another "who-knows?" belonging to us all, which will remain here among us, unanswered, long after the sun has set.

The controversy over Yizhar's story "Hirbet Hiz'ah" was renewed in the late 1970s when it was adapted by Israeli television. In this fictional account of a captured Arab village whose civilian population is being evacuated, Yizhar once more places a uniformed narrator in a moral dilemma. Unlike the other men in his unit, who are preoccupied with carrying out the evacuation of the population of the captured village, the narrator steps aside and is able to identify with the plight of the evacuees, the civilian victims of war. As the narrator observes the parade of humanity making its way to the trucks, he sees them not only as a collective being but as individuals.

At the end of the line came the women. . . . Two old men passed in front of me muttering as they went. . . . After them, thinking they were going the right way, came others, dragging their feet through water. ... I do not know why it seemed so degrading to me. Like cattle, I thought, like cattle.

Yizhar singles out a woman to serve as an image of the individual who keeps her human dignity:

She looked strong, self-controlled, taut in her grief. . . . Suddenly we saw that this was the only woman who knew exactly what was happening to her, so that I felt ashamed in front of her and lowered my eyes. . . . We saw also how she was too proud to pay us even a morsel of attention. We understood that she was strong-headed, and saw that the furrows of restraint and the will to suffer heroically had hardened the lines of her face, and how, when her world had perished—she did not want to break before our eyes.

If we compare this Arab woman with Smilansky's heroine, Latifa, a structural affinity emerges at once. Latifa's affection for the Jewish narrator is alienated by an oppressive Arab father, whereas the figure of authority in 1948 is a Jewish narrator himself. The biblical setting further complicates the reader's response: is the tribal nature of Arab families reminiscent of the Old Testament kinship systems? Is the military prowess of the Israeli army a modern version of the victories in Exodus? In the second phase, the Israeli writer must mediate two cultural traditions at once, fused as they are by the Zionist movement: the modern (which seems so obviously appealing in "Latifa"), and the biblical.

The guilt that characterizes much of the Israeli war literature produced by the Generation of 1948, as well as the self-critical examination of social and moral values, continues in the literature of the 1950s and 1960s, which has come to be known as "The New Wave." Many of the writers of this period consciously attempted to free themselves from total engagement in national concerns, but none has fully succeeded in doing so. However, many Israeli-born writers made serious attempts to focus their attention on basic existential problems similar to those which preoccupied European and American writers of that period. A leading Israeli literary critic, Gershon Shaked, remarked that these writers found their way into the mainstream of literature "through many windows and side entrances" acting "all together and each one alone." The focus on the individual gave rise to fiction with a psychological orientation: social reality is important primarily as it affects the individual. Time and place now often take on metaphorical dimensions and self-consciousness, a descriptive tool in the hands of Yizhar, becomes a truly inventive device in the best modernist manner. These developments affect the way authors incorporate Arab characters into their fiction, particularly the best-known New Wave authors, Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua.

Amos Oz, who was born in Jerusalem and makes his home at Kibbutz Huida, often uses both landscapes and populations as his theatres of action for the fantasy world of his characters. External conflicts are used to display inner tensions, to illustrate conflicting psychological forces within an individual. Oz's protagonists lead a dual existence, divided often between the worlds of day and night. Oz is attracted to the darker aspects of the soul, primary urges and sexual drives, as well as vitality and artistic creativity. These are portrayed in many of his stories through demonic and animalistic images, dominating the world of his heroes and bringing them dangerously close to madness.

In his novel My Michael (1967), a pair of Arab twins, Aziz and Halil haunt its heroine, Chana. This story of a young Jerusalemite woman is narrated in the first person: the reader is given direct entry to Chana's innermost thoughts. Chana, in typical Oz fashion, shifts constantly from the world of everyday life to the fantasy world of the night. As the story progresses, the balance between dream and reality is disturbed, and the dream world begins to invade daytime existence. The dream-figures come from the world of fiction as well as from Chana's childhood; Captain Nemo and Michael Strogoff from Jules Verne's fiction exist alongside of Chana's childhood playmates Halil and Aziz. The twins function as inseparable parts of the heroine, reminiscent in their double identity of Jeremiah and Arthur in Kafka's The Castle and of Dürrenmatt's mirror-image twin couples in The Visit of the Old Lady. They assume a political role as well. They become an embodiment of her fears and violent wishes in contrast to her husband, Michael, who in her eyes lacks their vitality and force and whose existence belongs to the world of restrained desire, devoid of ecstasy and fire. Not surprisingly, they appear as a stereotypical composite of Palestinian guerillas, as in this dream sequence.

Dreams.

Hard things plot against me every night. The twins practice throwing grenades before dawn among the ravines of the Judaean Desert southeast of Jericho. Their twin bodies move in unison. Submachine guns on their shoulders. Worn commando uniforms stained with grease. A blue vein stands out of Haul's forehead. Aziz crouches, hurls his body forward. Halil drops his head. Aziz uncurls and throws. The dry shimmer of explosion. The hills echo and re-echo, the Dead Sea glows pale behind them like a lake of burning oil.

Oz, in an interview given shortly after My Michael appeared, conceded that the twins are drawn from what might be called a "psychopolitical construct": political realities have merged inseparably with other, more intimate realities. Speaking of stereotypes of the "enemy" in both cultures, Oz tries to define the center of the conflict.

I feel that it is fundamentally a struggle not over territories or over symbols and the emotions they raise. I think that both sides in the conflict overlook the actual enemy. . . . Now for the Palestinian Arab, we are not Jews but a mere extension of the arrogant, white European oppressor. . . . Both parties regard their enemy as an extension of their traumatic experience. Both Israelis and Arabs are fighting against the shadows of their own past.

Oz's comment helps explain the function of the Arab twins. The author feels the need to exorcize the demons within him and to expose hidden fears. Through his works of fiction he can involve his readers in a similar experience, helping them as well as himself deal with inescapable traumas. The threatening Arab presence serves as a metaphor but also as precisely the kind of daily pressure upon the Israeli psyche most conducive to recurrent neurosis.

Symbolism and allegory dominate much of the early fiction of A. B. Yehoshua, another Jerusalem-born author who came to prominence in the 1960s. In his early stories Yehoshua seeks to dissociate himself from the Israeli landscape, and to deal with concerns of the human condition. The conflict between life forces and death yearnings, the rebellion against the absurdity of a life which lacks meaning, the loss of faith, the alienation of people in a mechanized society, the loss of hope and innocence of youth: these are some of the themes in his short stories. The Death of the Old Man (1962), his first collection, is permeated by pessimism and hopelessness.

In Yehoshua's second collection of stories, Facing the Forests, which appeared in 1968, a new development becomes apparent. While he continues to pursue earlier themes, his use of time and place exhibits a marked change: the earlier unidentifiable symbolic landscapes metamorphose into the Israeli landscape of the 1960s. The characters, too, are no longer identified by initials or by names reflecting only generic societal roles; they now assume national and ethnic identities as well as generational affiliations. These developments do not signal a change in Yehoshua's basic preoccupations, but rather give force and added complexity to his fictions. Rebellion against social norms and conventions, against boredom and routine, takes the shape of rebellion against the symbols and rituals of Israeli society. The feelings of guilt, anxiety, and entrapment which haunt his heroes appear in forms recognizable in a specifically Israeli context.

The title story, "Facing the Forests," concerns two characters, an aging Israeli graduate student turned firewatcher in a Jewish National Fund forest and an elderly Arab, survivor of a village destroyed in the 1948 war and buried beneath the forest. Each moves from his own vantage point toward their common goal, destruction of the forest. Each understands the forest differently: for the fire-watcher it embodies the ideals of the generation of the fathers, the accepted rituals and values of the founders, the aging hopes of the Zionist dream, while for the old Arab it represents the invasion of his village by foreigners. The student carries on the age-old conflict of the generations, while the Arab's burden is a political one. Both characters are marginal members of their own societies. The student, who is approaching middle age, is both unable to work on his research on the Crusades (a suggestive topic in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict) and unable to assume his place in adult society, while his contemporaries have settled down, pursued careers and gained status in society. The Arab also lives in isolation; he no longer has a village to which he belongs. He lives in the forest with his young granddaughter, on the ruins of the old village, waiting for an opportune moment to take revenge.

Yehoshua provides the reader with little description of the old Arab, who never materializes in the story as a full flesh and blood figure. He simply embodies the consequences of the war: "The Arab turned out to be old and mute. His tongue was cut out during the war. By one of them or one of us? Does it matter?" The Arab's muteness emphasizes the lack of communication between the Arab and Jew and contributes to his one-dimensional shadowy character. The reader cannot identify with or fully understand the old Arab. But he fulfills one, all-important function: lacking the ambivalence of the main protagonist, the old Arab can and does carry out the act of destruction. The indecisive hero needs his Arab companion to do the job, for he himself is rendered impotent by his inner conflicts and cannot translate his desire into action.

The Arab and the Jew in this story are united by much more than their common goal. If the story were essentially a political piece, aspects of this union would seem arbitrary and unconvincing. However, the story is more of a psychological essay; the two characters are not separable but add up to one identity. The old Arab personifies the "other" of the student. Representing but one force in a complex subconscious world, the Arab can act unequivocably, while the student, psychologically constrained, is inactive. The fusion of the two figures into one is clearest near the end of the story, where Yehoshua describes the two in the forest after they have reached an agreement, through non-verbal communication, to set the forest on fire.

Together, in silence, they return to the forest, their empire, theirs alone. The fire-watcher strides ahead and the Arab tramples on his footsteps. .. . He leads the Arab over roads that are the same roads always. Barefoot he walks, the Arab, and so quietly. Round and round he is led, roundabout and to his hideout, among chiseled stone and silence.

The ruined village has a special meaning for the student as well as for the Arab. As in Yizhar's stories, village life represents the focus of romantic yearnings for a past which no longer exists, for earlier times when innocence and youthful vision as well as hope were available. The act of violence which destroys the forest gives the student a momentary glimpse of the dream which preceded it.

He turns his gaze to the fire-smoking hills, frowns—there, out of the smoke and haze, the ruined village appears before his eyes, born anew in its basic outline, as an abstract drawing of all things past and buried.

The aftermath of the destruction leaves the student disillusioned and without hope, having descended to a further level of desperation. The mythologized past in which Arab and Jew might have lived together as Semitic kin is no longer accessible to either side, certainly not by means of the mutual destruction each group finds so tempting as a final solution.

The 1973 War had a strong psychological impact on Israeli society, which no longer saw itself as invincible. In literature the change is manifested in a return to immediate social and political concerns. The fictional works of writers like Yitzhaq Ben-Ner and Sami Michael deal with Israeli reality, and A. B. Yehoshua's novel The Lover (1979) explores directly the impact of the war on its participants. Yehoshua presents one of the most interesting and well-developed Arab characters in Israeli fiction. The scene is clearly identified politically and socially: the months before and after the 1973 war. Of the cast of six principal characters in search of love and lovers, the most interesting is Na'im, an adolescent Arab. When The Lover was adapted for the stage Na'im became, even more clearly, the central figure, and the play took his name for its title.

Far from being a stereotype, Na'im is revealed to the reader as a complex individual, who grows and attains identity and maturity as the story progresses. His role as a lover does not end when the story ends but gives promise of continuing. Unlike the old Arab in "Facing the Forests," Na'im not only has the power of speech but speaks in the first person. The reader gets to know his innermost thoughts, and is offered an interesting and convincing view of the Arab presence in Israeli society. Though a villager, Na'im works in Haifa, in a garage owned by Jews, and is thus part of the world where Jews and Arabs interact. When the war breaks out, he finds himself, like other Israeli-Arabs, entangled in ethnic and national conflicts of identity. Yehoshua attempts to understand his difficult position as the enemy within.

They are getting themselves killed again and when they get themselves killed we have to shrink and lower our voices and mind not to laugh even at some joke that's got nothing to do with them. This morning on the bus when the news was coming over the radio Issam was talking in a loud voice and laughing and the Jews in the front of the bus turned around and gave us a dry sort of look.

Knowing where to draw the line, that's what matters, and whoever doesn't want to know had better stay in the village and laugh alone in the fields or sit in the orchard and curse the Jews as long as he likes. Those of us who are with them all day have to be careful. No, they don't hate us. Anyone who thinks they hate us is completely wrong. We're beyond hatred, for them we're like shadows. Take, fetch, hold, clean, lift, sweep, unload, move. That's the way they think of us.

Adolescent diffidence and villager distance from city life: these factors shape Na'im's words but the complexity of his position transcends them.

There are six narrating voices in The Lover; the major characters speak in turn about each other and events involving them. Thus Yehoshua not only looks at his world through Arab eyes, but also at the Arab world through Jewish eyes. Adam, who employs many Arab workers in his garage, reflects on "The Arab Question" with an informed resistance to usual formulations. Describing a get-together with friends, he expresses irritation with the usual generalizations which bring Jews no closer to understanding.

One of those Friday night debates. . . . when they start on that political crap about the Arabs, the Arab character, the Arab mentality and all the rest of it, I get irritable, start grumbling, lately I've lost patience with these debates. "What do you really know about them? I employ perhaps thirty Arabs in my garage and believe me, every day I become less of an expert on Arabs."

"But those Arabs are different."

"Different from what?"

Na'im is not a product of traditional Arab society alone, but has also been shaped by the Israeli society around him. His ambivalence and confusion concerning his identity are viewed by Yehoshua as giving reason for both hope and despair. The influences on Na'im are many, putting before him several models for behavior and action. For example, one of his brothers, unable to fit into Israeli society, with its limited opportunities for Arabs, turns to terrorism. Others prefer to work with the system, but remain separate and aloof.

Yehoshua successfully allows his characters to move in a psychopolitical arena; they gain an added dimension of strength from the political reality around them. While love rather than war becomes the center of the conflict, like war it remains unresolved. Na'im is at the center of these interchanges, a threatening yet deeply attractive figure for the Jews around him. As Adam states at the end of the story, when he discovers that Na'im has become his daughter's lover: "What's he thinking? He's a stranger really, another world, and I thought he was close to me." Adam is paralyzed by the whole complex of events surrounding the war. Na'im, however, comes into his own both as an Israeli-Arab who acknowledges that "It's possible to love them and hurt them too," and as a young man with an uncertain future. In the last line of the novel, he says of himself: "The people [in my village] will wonder what's happened to Na'im that he's suddenly so full of hope." There is little hope expressed by Adam for himself and for his generation; that is left to his daughter Dafi, and more so, to Na'im. No realistic portrayal, this novel is perhaps as one Israeli critic writes, "distant, perplexing, irrational and absurd—almost like life."

Another novel of Haifa in the 1973 War offers a more hopeful view of Israeli society but at the same time a more pessimistic view of Arab-Israeli relations in Israel. Sami Michael's Hasut ("Refuge") (1977) describes a broad sample of Arab figures and their interactions with part of Israeli society. The novel ends where a more optimistic narrative would have begun: "He was just an Arab and she was just a Jew." No closer relationship is promised or deemed possible; rather, the story describes growing distance and manifold tensions between the two groups. Hasut focuses on the personal, political and social problems among members of a binational Communist organization in Haifa. It traces the deterioration of coexistence as the ideological common ground for the two groups, which sufficed in prewar days, breaks down during the '73 War. Arab and Jewish members are polarized. Even though all are revolutionaries and wish to see fundamental changes in the existing structure of society, such common values cannot bridge the deep differences which separate them into two distinct groups.

The city of Haifa provides an obvious locale for the activities of the organization. It is the northern capital for both Jews and Arabs and contains within it some of the elements which earlier earned it the name of "Red Haifa." The organization is on the edge of both Jewish and Arab societies. Among its members are old-time Communists, accustomed to accepting discipline without questions, and young idealists who believe that Communism offers a way for true cooperation between the two national groups. The loss of this belief is one of the major focuses of the novel. The Jewish protagonists have to acknowledge that the realization of Arab national-territorial aspirations stands in direct opposition to similar needs in Jewish society. While they demonstrate sympathy for the complicated position of Israeli-Arabs, who feel like strangers in their own land and like second-class citizens, they cannot accept the dissolution of the Jewish national entity as the price for redressing Arab grievances.

As the title Hasut suggests, the story is about giving refuge and shelter to those who need it in times of emergency. The need for refuge is examined in two parallel situations. The first is recounted in a flashback and concerns refuge given to Mardukh, an Iraqi-Jew (with a background suggestive of that of the author) while he was an active Communist in Iraq. The second involves the shelter given to Fathi, an Arab-Israeli poet, in Mardukh's Israeli home. Both Mardukh and Fathi perceive themselves as revolutionaries escaping the authorities, although the similarity of their situations is only superficial. Mardukh, fleeing from Iraqi authorities, fears for his life. He is indeed captured by the authorities and jailed. Mardukh tells of the cruelty of his jailers, who "do not believe in using only psychological means [of persuasion]," who live in a culture which "used and still uses today physical means only." Although Mardukh is reflecting about the past in Iraq, it is clear that Michael here intends these words to serve as a clear warning for the present as well. Mardukh is eventually driven out of Iraq by the same revolutionaries at whose side he fought; he is driven out merely because he is Jewish, and eventually finds himself in Israel, as a place of last resort. "He did not come to Israel as a tourist, nor as a new immigrant. He did not want to come here at all . . . but they did not want him . . . they told him that only Israel would accept him . . . and here he found work, and even freedom to continue to curse everything that comes to his mind . . . this country gave him refuge." Israel, refuge, and home have become synonymous not only for Mardukh as an individual, but for Jews in general.

The Israeli-Arab poet Fathi, on the other hand, has different motives for seeking refuge. He is not running away from a well-defined physical danger. The motives for his running can be found in his own needs; he must see himself as a pursued person in order to maintain the illusion that he is taking an active part in the Arab struggle against the Jewish population in Israel. Mardukh's wife, Shula, gives him shelter in her home, while her husband is fighting at the front. For Shula and Mardukh the act of granting refuge has become a holy value. Those around him see Fathi's hiding as a way of running from reality; Fathi is the only one who entirely believes that he is in need of shelter. When he comes to believe that victory for the Arab armies is at hand, Fathi offers Shula and her son refuge with Arab friends. Shula refuses the offer because Israel and shelter are identical, not just for Shula and her son but for the entire nation. Jews have no real refuge except in their own home, and an offer of a stranger's home is unreliable.

While Fathi is the most complex character in the novel, the real tragic character, evoking the full sympathy of the reader, is Fuad. A revolutionary ideologist, he is searching for the golden path of mutual coexistence. He continually rejects violence and military conflict as the only solutions, in spite of the fact that he feels pride as an Arab whenever he hears of an Arab military victory. Obstinately, without hope or illusion, Fuad continues in the political struggle for both social and national justice. The national tragedy which affects his people is also expressed on a personal level. He is married to a Jewish woman from a family with deep Zionist roots. Fuad, his wife and their three sons do not find their place in either Jewish or Arab society, with grave consequences for the sons, who lack both national and personal identities. Fuad sees Fathi as an Arab devoid of national pride who is hiding not from Israeli authorities but from his own problems. "As an Arab," says Fuad to Fathi, "you are a man with the soul of a pursued animal." It is mainly the characterization of Arabs in Fathi's poetry that angers Fuad.

"What does this guy know about Arabs? He knows nothing about the past of his people, and one searches his poetry in vain for the proud fighting Arab. He portrays exactly the Arab in the minds of Tel Aviv females,... a character which he portrays well himself. It wins him another fuck. A desperate, pursued, landless miserable Arab, afraid and trembling with fearful nightmares, and so he longs for the pity of some female who will play to the neglected child in him."

The contemporary assimilationist solution to the problem of the Israeli-Arab, with the attendant loss of all Arab characteristics, is also described by Michael in negative terms. Emil and Amalia, another mixed Arab-Jewish couple who are members of the leftist organization, have solved their problems at the cost of Emil's loss of Arab identity. "Emil is now pasteurized and homogenized . . . he is brainwashed .. . he is not an Arab anymore .. . he has lost his identity as an Arab. His Arab friends do not dare express everything openly, but they say that he is no longer a man," remarks Fuad's Jewish wife.

The main question facing the Jewish members of the group is that of physical and national survival. They are confronted with a war situation, and in spite of their ties to the binational leftist group, there is no question of their ultimate allegiance. The war clarifies ambiguities for the Jewish participants, just as it multiplies them for the Israeli-Arabs. Mardukh asks himself the relevant question when the war breaks out, and is able to provide an answer for it. The question is put in the following words: "If Israel ceases to exist, what will later generations remember?" He answer thus: "Only two things, .. . a fantastic agriculture in an arid region and the defeat of the Arabs. I have no part in either." However, by the end of the novel he has some stake in both, since by his participation in the 1973 war he both defends the agriculture and takes part in defeating the Arabs.

Defeating the Arabs. Being defeated by the Arabs. Coexisting with the Arabs. History has provided Israeli writers with the same inescapable options as the nation at large. There can be few literary circles which feel so closely monitored by their reading public as in Israel, for every narrative turn and counter-turn is tantamount to a political manifesto. To tread the fine line between wish and reality—the dream of conciliation, the fact of armed resistance—has been the art of Israeli fiction. The evolution surveyed here has not been in the direction of amelioration and community. In spite of hopes for closer ties through better understanding there is a growing pessimism in recent writing. The tensions between the two groups have in many ways increased. However, Israeli writers continue to speak, knowing that openness in discussing even the most painful issues is necessary. It is appropriate to conclude this essay with a recent poem by Yehuda Amichai, one of the leading poets of Israel, which expresses the ever-present hope for a new beginning.

An Arab Shepherd Searches for a Lamb on Mount Zion

An Arab shepherd searches for a lamb on Mount Zion,
And on the hill across I search for my little son,
An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
In their temporary failure.
Our voices meet above
the Sultan's pool in the middle of the valley.
We both want the son and the lamb
to never enter the process
of the terrible machine of "Chad Gadya".*
Later we found them in the bushes,
and our voices returned to us crying and laughing inside

The search for a lamb and for a son
was always
the beginning of a new religion in these hills.

(free translation by EAC)

* Chad Gadya ('One Little Lamb") is a traditional poem recited during the Passover Seder, in which the lamb, bought by the father for his children, is devoured, starting a chain of similar events, which are climaxed by a divine intervention (cf. This is the House that Jack Built).