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tivist, Emil Grunzweig- A . B. Yehoshua warned of the deleterious
effects of the politicization ofliterature . "As the conflicts between the
two main concepts of Israeli identity develop, literature will become
a major weapon in this fight. This will destroy the subtleties, the deep
areas in which the varieties of human experience can be expressed ...
[literature] is in danger of becoming a fight between the good guys
and the bad." But Yehoshua was more right than he imagined: not
only the literary, but also the political imagination lost its subtle
shadings, its depth and variety.
When the 1984 elections resulted in a hung Knesset, four writers
-A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, Hayyim Guri and S. Yizhar-pub–
lished a call to their comrades in the dovish left to join the national
unity government they saw emerging. "We pleaded for the coalition
with the Likud," Oz recalled, in order "to opt for the lesser of the
many evils. At the time, I felt that either a narrow Labor-led coali–
tion depending on the Knesset support of the communist party, or
a right-wing coalition leaning on [extreme right-wing Rabbi Meir]
Kahane, would be an illegitimate government in the eyes of half the
nation."
Before issuing it, Oz and Yehoshua cleared their call with some
of the people to whom it was addressed. Bur the stubborn refusal of
the Mapam party to sit with Likud paved the way for the creation
of a bloc of ten Knesset members in the opposition democratic left.
Mapam, the Movement for Citizen's Rights and Peace, and the larger
part of the Peace Now leadership remained in opposition when Shi–
mon Peres took Labor into the semi-power of the national unity gov–
ernment - and by its desertion so weakened the Labor bloc as to force
it to accept the "rotation" agreement to surrender the prime minister's
office to Likud this fall .
The writers' call provoked a counter call published by a group
of poets and critics accusing the Oz group of betraying the left. This
second group retained the habits of mind and political instincts which
had steeled them against the seven Likud years, but which were in–
adequate and inappropriate to the new situation. (For one thing,
they were unable to make sense of their desire to seek reconciliation
with the PLO but not with the Israeli right.) This debate has not
reached its climax.
It
has continued, and finds expression in literary,
journalistic, political and personal matters . The herd has split up .
The debate over the possibility of cooperating with the right re–
flected opposing spiritual, and not merely tactical or political, strate–
gies . The "realists," as Oz prefers his wing to be labelled, read the
