MICHAL GOVRIN
277
leave the "sexy city" for the Eros of the "woman city"? I settled down
in jerusalem's community of writers and artists, each of whom is giving
his own expression to the unique reality of the city. And so, with my
books and my theater work, I also raised generations of young theater
directors, including Palestinians . As someone educated to believe in
humanity and art in times of darkness, respect for the Arabs, and for the
national aspirations of young Palestinians, was natural to me-like the
belief (in the spirit of the Prophets, or with naivete) that national stories
can include respect for otherness. I helpe d my Palestinian students stage
their stories and kept track of them in the theaters they founded in
Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem. Even the everyday life of studying and
creating together was a fascinating theater in itself.
In the winter of
I99I,
the directing class at the School of Visual The–
ater continued, despite the Gulf War. One of the students, Khamal, a
graceful actor from the eastern part of the city, portrayed an unforgettable
Firs in Chekhov, and read in Arabic from the Koran the story of Sarah,
Isaac, Hagar, and Ishmael. After the war, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed a
high school. student and an enraged Jewish mob took to the streets.
Khamal had to go home, and the secretary and the worried students snuck
him into their car. There also was Ibrahim, the young intellectual from
Gaza, and Raeda, a Christian actress and director from Beit Jalla. In the
theater milieu, we all felt a change taking place in the relations of the two
communities. The popular nature of the first intifada
(I987-I99I)
shook
Israeli society. Despite stormy arguments about the Madrid talks and the
Oslo Agreement-until they culminated in Rabin's murder-and despite
the continued settlements and violations of agreements, within Israeli
society, Left and Right, there was a growing awareness of the rights of the
Palestinian people and the need for a new "partition plan" instead of the
one the Palestinian leadership and the Arab states rejected in
I947.
No
less complicated was the fast reversal in Israeli society.
In the spring of
I994,
in days of hope for peace, Ibrahim painted the
poster for
Romeo and Juliet
in a Jewish-Arab coproduction by the Khan
and Casbah theaters in Jerusalem. The Palestinian leadership returned
from exile, the Palestinian Autonomy in the Gaza Strip and Jericho were
established, and Israeli society flourished, absorbing a million refugees
from the former Soviet Union and almost the entire Jewish community
from Ethiopia. But in March
I996,
when I was invited to tape an Israeli
television program devoted to Khamal, the clouds were already begin–
ning to gather. That fall, Rabin was murdered, and Israeli society raged.
The transfer of government from the Israeli army to the Palestinian
Authority was accompanied by a furious mob in Jenin calling for jihad
