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inclusion, and equal treatment in the distribution ofservices - although not yet
for equality of obligations, as in an alternative (to military) form of national
service. They do not shy away from articulating a dovish-to-radical pro-PLO
foreign policy, or from voting in large numbers. They are, inevitably,
distinctly Israeli Arabs, and this process is bound to take its toll in a society
dominated by the culture-specific (and exclusionary) symbols of the Jewish
majority.
Thus, while Israeli (and Diaspora) Jewish society is periodically thrown
into an uproar over Orthodox rabbinic attempts to restrict the definition of
"Who is a Jew?", Israeli Arabs are stretching the meaning of "Who is an Is–
raeli?". To most Jewish Israelis, Israel is a Jewish state, within the context of
Jewish historical experience, and bears the scars of the internal contradictions
of that history. But seventeen percent of the citizens ofthe Israeli state are
Arabs. Their citizenship is modified by the fact that in some measure their
loyalties are divided between Israel and the Arab world which has been un–
remittingly hostile to the "Jewish" state. But by now they are undeniably Is–
raeli Arabs, speak Hebrew, and seek to expand (or eliminate) the definitions
which narrow their possibilities. The program of the largely Arab-supported
Israeli communist party, for example, is more of an Israeli Arab civil rights
party rather than a Marxist-Leninist avant garde.
There were no forty years of solitude. Beneath the masks of silence,
Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians are almost obsessively thinking
about,
if
not always talking to, each other. Twenty years after the occupation
began, and just as the
intifada
-
the Palestinian "uprising" - volcanically
erupts and forever alters the landscape, two books have appeared, written in
Hebrew, aimed at Jewish Israeli readers ,
Epistles
to the Hebrews.
Arabesques
1
and
The Yellow Wind
2
emerged like two butterflies from their
cocoons, or like time bombs that had been ticking for two decades.
The Yellow Wind
first appeared in the now defunct newsweekly
Koteret
Rashit ,
which devoted a full issue to novelist David Grossman's account of
his journey through the West Bank. The book does not contain any startling
revelations about the "evils" of the occupation, and yet its publication created
a major stir. Although it steers clear of politicizing or mere reportage,
The
Yellow Wind
fractures irrevocably the view of Israel frozen in its pre-1967
(pre-occupation) mode. That Grossman is able to do this without the usual
heavy dose ofJewish guilt, and without suspending his sense of irony and
cynicism when it comes to the Arab voices in the book, makes his achieve–
ment all the more noteworthy.
The Yellow Wind
is a novel contribution to the
literature of the Israeli-Arab dispute because it navigates between the ice-
1
Arabesques.
By Anton Shammas. Harper and Row. $ 16.95.
2The Yellow Wind.
By
David Grossmann. Farrar, Straus
&
Giroux. $17.95.
