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PARTISAN REVIEW
ASG:
You mentioned in your book that one of the previous editors of
the paper had been kidnapped, never to be seen again.
AO:
Yes, and a couple of Palestinian spokesmen who had the
courage to repeat in public what they said to their Israeli counter–
parts in private were shot dead by their own people .
ASG:
Do you think that anything has changed in Israel since you
wrote the book?
AO:
A hell of a lot has changed. Begin has gone , Israel is out of
Lebanon, a certain realization about the limits of military power has
dawned on Israel , possibly a certain realization might have dawned
on the Palestinians - oh, a hell of a lot.
ASG:
Is it for the better?
AO:
I should like to think that, all said and done, yes, though at a
very costly price in human lives. Israelis are more aware now of
what cannot be done by military force, and the Palestinians are
more aware now of their essential isolation in the world, and of the
fact that, apart from token verbal support, nobody gives a damn
about them - except, perhaps , for those four hundred thousand
Israelis who demonstrated after the massacre in Sabra and Shatilla.
I think that registered very well with the Palestinians . I don't expect
Arafat publicly to hug Israel for that demonstration, or the Israeli
Peace Now movement, but I think it registered.
ASG:
Did you approve of the exchange of several hundred Pales–
tinian prisoners for just three Israeli soldiers?
AO:
It's not the numbers that startled me . I would have released any
number of PLO activists or sympathizers or whatever, in return for
our own captives; I would not have released convicted murderers .
ASG:
In an earlier conversation with me, you said that
In the Land of
Israel
was "technically nonfiction, but in some ways another Ozian
novel." Could you amplify this remark?
AO:
My method of working on
In the Land of Israel
was essentially not
very different from my method of working on novels or stories. I
work with a polyphony of voices without necessarily taking sides
with one character or another. I try to give a fair hearing, a fair un–
derstanding, a fair voice to each one of my "fictitious" characters–
which is exactly what I did in
A Perfect Peace.
I was thrilled by the
variety of powerful, convincing, yet contradictory opinions when I
was working on that collection of interviews .
ASG:
Even the orthodox fanatics?
AO:
In a paradoxical way, while working on those interviews, I
almost loved even what I hated.
