The New Era of Peace in the Middle East

A Talk Delivered by

Poet and Journalist Salem Jubran and Novelist and Playwright

Sami Michael

at the International Issues Forum, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, April 10,1995

Salem Jubran: I am glad to meet with you, together with my friend Sami

Michael, to discuss the situation in our country, the relations between our two peoples, and the role ofwriters, poets, and intellec- tuals in general in narrowing the gaps and bringing peace between our two peoples.

I was born in avillage in the north of our country called in Arabic Bugay'a (in Hebrew Piqi'in). I t is a small but beautiful and unique village where people from the three religious communities-the Muslims, the Druze and the Christians- lived together with the Jewish community, a typical Palestinian Middle Eastern communi- ty of Jews who had been part of the population for many centuries.

What was most important was that each of the four communi- ties preserved its own religious and social traditions, each had its own place of prayer, and over many many years, all four communi- ties were practically one family, not only citizens of one village, and

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Peace

in days of happiness and pleasure, in days of sorrow and sadness, there was a very deep human society between the people of the village. Therefore, whenever I meet with Jews or Arabs in my country, I am proud to say that if it was possible to live together, to coexist, to respect each other in my own village, in this small territory in my country, there is no reason not to achieve equality and coexistence, respect, and harmonious relations between the Jews and the Arabs elsewhere. Unfortunately, this is not what happens. Already, for more than 100 years there has been conflict- conflict between the Jews and the Arabs, sometimes with religious character. Each side thinks subjectively that it is the right side, that the country is its country, and each side has attempted, using military means, to guarantee its possession of the whole country.

The last 100 years has brought people on both sides to a very simple realization that it’s impossible not to have bloodshed, con- flict, alienation, and hatred prevail in our country if every side says, “It is only for me; you are foreigner. I have all the right and you have no right at all.” This small, rolling, and tragic country has become a bi-national country in the last hundred years. Until the eve of this century, the Jews in Palestine made up less than five percent of the population, and they were natives, but the historical developments in the last 100 years made our country a country of two national entities, two cultures, two peoples. When war failed as an alterna- tive, when the nationalistic approach failed, we had no other alternative but to find a historical compromise, a historical reconcil- iation which gives every national entity the right to live free, to preserve its unique characteristics.

Only four years ago, Mr. Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel now, declared to the Israeli Parliament that the only place that he was ready to meet with the PLO was on the battlefield. Palestinians and other Arab politicians, likewise, made hundreds of statements denying the right of existence of the Israeli state.

I am proud, as a Palestinian and as an Israeli citizen, that the national leaderships of both the Palestinians and the Israeli Jews have finally come to the conclusion that it is impossible to wage war forever. We waste our blood. We waste our energy. We distort our human nature. We are brought to a tragic situation in which fathers bury their sons, and this terrible situation cannot continue. Usually a man needs to be brave in order to go to war, but I believe that after so many, many years of war, a man needs a special courage to say, “I am going to stop war, I am going to promote peace.” Only brave politicians can do this, and, I say, as a Palestinian and as an Israeli

citizen, I am proud and happy that our two nations for the first time decided to end war and conflict and to solve our problems by political and peaceful means.

There’s a strong and extremist opposition to peace, but I believe the majority of the Jewish people and of the Palestinian people support peace because they know that peace means, first of all and above all, no more killing of the young generations in the battlefield. If this is the only achievement of peace, peace must be precious for both nations. Peace brings security; peace makes changing social and economic priorities a realistic possibility. Peace means using funds for development, for sustenance, for culture, for sport, and, for the first time in modern history, peace gives the Palestinian people the chance to be free and independent, to build their national home according to their own national will, to be a free nation in their homeland, exactly like any other nation in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Writers have their limits, but writers, artists, musicians, and intellectuals in general have a very important and historical role in changing the national mood of their own people from hatred to friendship, from alienation to cooperation, from war to peace. I am proud that in the last year, my friend Sami Michael and I made a tour of the country, especially in the schools, both Jewish and Arab, to propagate peace, not in slogans, not in political platforms, but in the attempt to help every pupil to look deep into his own soul and search the human being, the man or woman who wants to live, to create, to leave to his son and daughter a new, secure, and beautiful life.

Peace does not mean and will not mean that I, an Arab, will become a Jew or that the Jew become an Arab. Peace means that every side develops its unique personality and entity, preserves its cultural heritage, its historical, cultural, linguistic identity and religious heritage, but without chauvinism without a narrow-mind- ed approach, without hatred. I stand as open as the tent of our father Abraham which was open from all sides. I’m open to the influence of humanistic, Jewish literature or any other literature. We want to be what we are, and we want to be a part of humanity. We need peace, and peace in the Middle East is supported by the world community-by the United States, by the European countries, by Russia, by China, by Japan. Practically no one serious country in the world opposes the historical trend to peace in the Middle East. With our experience and wisdom as two civilized nations and with the help of all people of good will in the world, I hope our fine, beautiful,

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and rolling country will be again a country of peace for all mankind.

Sami Michael: When I was asked to make this tour with my dear friend SZlem

Jubran, I asked myselfwhat I am going to say in my broken English about what is going on now in the Middle East. There is a feeling that we are living an important era, something like a turning point, in the history of the Middle East. At the same time, my friend and I know the Middle East is a very historical region, and I think, that everyone thinks they are doing a historical job. When there is such a feeling, everyone thinks that he has the right solution.

I am not sure that I have very solid ideas about the future. I was born in Baghdad as an Arab Jew and my mother language was Arabic, and my country was Arab culture. I thought that because I was a member of such an ancient a community, more than two thousand years old, that I would live there with my children and my grand-grandchildren for maybe another two thousand years, until the Messiah eventually comes. We felt so good on the beautiful river, and there was so much good fish and such good meat and very superb rice, that we didn’t ask the Messiah to hurry. But without knowing how it happened, I find my self sitting here, telling you in broken English, what is wrong in the Middle East.

In the deep sense of the word, I don’t know. There is a feeling, my friend Jubran says, that matters can’t go on as it is because if they do, every partisan will demolish those of the other side. At this moment, in Yugoslavia, in Rwanda and other places, they are doing just that. This is a possibility in the Middle East. So I have more questions than answers, and it seems very silly to me to come here to a city whose name I have difficulty pronouncing to tell you what is the right line that we must take to solve our problems.

As I said, I was born in a stable country that made me think my world would continue forever, but I was greatly disappointed. I did not leave Iraq out of an inner conviction but because I was expelled from Iraq.

One day I found myself standing in the Holy Land without any holy feeling, without my mother language, without any identity, without knowing even three sentences in Hebrew, without my friends, without my home, and I had to stand there and fight for my new language which I didn’t know, for my new country where I did not know north from south, and where nothing made any sense.

Like every Israeli, I served in the army, and I tried to be a good soldier. I wasn’t in a fighting unit so I did my job very well, but when

a soldier finally reaches the last day of his two years of service, it is a joy to put away his uniform and become a civilian, and around him everyone is joyous, and he is very happy to go home. When this day arrived for me, I left camp, but I was unhappy because my family didn't come with me, and, for the second time, I have no home to go to. I have no job, I have no friends in Israel, and I stood at the gate looking at the happy soldiers who had become happy civilians going home, and I felt a great longing to go back to my old life. Because of that, I found my way to Haifa, to the Arab region, and I got a room from anhablandlady, averyoldhablady, and for five years Iwent to the university in Haifa.

Now, after so many unstable years and after so many words, I find myself the father of one daughter and a son, the grandfather of three grandchildren, and the writer of about ten novels. All of them are Israeli, all of them are Hebrew, and all of them are mine. They are the only thing that I can say are mine in Israel.

I think it is very stupid to stand before a big mountain, which is about one million years old, when I am only 69 years old, and say, "This mountain is mine." But my sons and my grandchildren are really mine, if they accept me, of course. I have a problem with my grandchildren because they will live their new lives while I am living my old life, and living this life, I have really more questions than answers, but I will be happy to consider more questions with you. I come from the Third World to the First World, from an ancient culture to a newer one, from a country with two peoples who are living a very mad situation, so I have numerous questions to ponder with you, and I will try.

Question: Both of you are writers and intellectuals and visionaries. You

transcend the limits of narrow political quarrels and military conflicts, but do you visualize that the end of the peace negotiations will resolve into two independent states living side by side with each other and friendly to one another, or will all the conflicts that are going on now destroy this vision of peaceful coexistence?

Michael: I think that we are living now in a such a time that the clash, the

animosity, between Israel and the Palestinians, between Israel and the Arab states, is now a secondary issue in the Middle East. I am assured that after 100 years of the Jews trying to throw the Arabs into the desert and the Palestinians trying to throw the Jews into

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the sea, both of them have come to the conclusion that they can’t live without each other-like a married couple. The real issues now in the Middle East are the internal wars inside the Arab world and inside Israel itself. Rabin, who has only 52 percent of the majority, is negotiating with Arafat who doesn’t even have that much of a majority. Although I am not a religious person, every day I stand at the window and I pray, “God, give good health to Rabin. God, be merciful to Arafat,” because the foundations of Arafat and Rabin’s power are not stable.

There is a war going on now in Algiers, a war going on in the south of Egypt, so I am concerned also about Mubarak. I don’t know what is going now in Jordan, so I am very concerned about the health of Hussein, too. I don’t know what will happen after five or six years in Saudi Arabia, and I don’t know when Saddam Hussein’s genie will go out of the bottle and clutch something else. I don’t know what Iranian mullahs are dreaming at night, but surely they are not good dreams. The whole region is like a volcano. I think (really, I hope) that fighting each other for about 100 years has made them similar, like a couple who, after living together for fifty years, have nearly the same nose. The Palestinians now are so Israeli and the Jews in Israel are so Palestinian that we use the same arms to kill each other.

Question: I grew up in Morocco reading Palestinian literature which

expresses the dream of a land they no longer possess and a yearning for the oranges of Haifa. The two of you are living in Israel and you have achieved something there, but how about the others who are not there? Do you share with them the dream, and can you under- stand the others?

Jubran: The Arab world, unfortunately, does not know either the Arab

literature created within Israel nor the Hebrew literature. They do not know the patriotic literature created in Israel by Arabs because for many years their official approach was negative towards the Arabs living within Israel, who were often were portrayed as if they were collaborators, helpers of the Zionist entity. Eventually the Arab world discovered the patriotic and sincere literature, both prose and poetry, which was created by our intellectuals, but unfortunately the majority of the Jews didn’t know our own litera- ture, first of all because they didn’t know Arabic, and secondly

because in time of war, they were not interested in translating our literature into Hebrew.

In the last ten years, there has been a very interesting develop- ment. First of all, more and more Arab literature by Palestinians, Egyptians, and Sudanese was translated into Hebrew. My friend Michael translated the famous trilogy of Nagib Mafouz into Hebrew. Other intellectuals of Iraqi origin edited a fine anthology of Pales- tinian modern literature. In the last year, a book of the famous Jewish writer Amos Oz was translated into Arabic in Egypt, and there were good responses in the media to this book. Next week the most important book of my friend Sami Michael, which was trans- lated in Egypt from Hebrew into Arabic, will be published. So the beginnings of a reconciliation on the political level of the nation inevitably will lead to a reconciliation on the spiritual level. The Jews need to read Arabic literature in order to know the real Arab, and the Arabs need to study Hebrew literature in order to under- stand the real Jew.

The commanders-in-chief and prime ministers and foreign ministers represent both nations very limitedly. I believe culture, more than any other thing, can really give a deep sincere, all-sided spirit of a nation. Therefore, we attempt to convince people to study the language and literature of the other side, and to help both nations to see in peace not a burden, but a privilege.

Four or five years ago, only four percent of the Jewish popula- tion in Israel supported teaching Arabic in the Jewish schools. One year after the beginning of the peace process, a poll showed that forty-six percent of the Jewish population support teaching Arabic in the Jewish schools. Palestinian teachers, physicians, lawyers, engineers are coming to study Hebrew, not as the language of the enemy, not according to the slogan that one must know the enemy, but according to the promise and the dream to know the neighbor, to respect the neighbor. Now many Palestinians speak frankly that there are many things they can learn from the Israeli in science, in medicine, in agriculture, in culture, in welfare policy, in trade unions, in many other forms. The attitude that the enemy is negative and black is gone. I believe that the intellectual has a great role to play. We help both nations to go back to being a healthy human being from a spiritual point of view.

Michael: Referring to the other part of your question-the oranges of

Haifa- let me say that history is written by two kinds of people: the

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yearning, defeated ones and the victorious ones, and both of them distort history. Like the Haifa oranges. There really are no oranges in Haifa. For 2000 years in Baghdad, poets wrote beautiful lamen- tations sitting on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris and crying about Jerusalem. We taught generations and generations of Jews how to weep while we were laughing, while we enjoyed sitting there on the Tigris river. The beautiful wailing for Haifa oranges really is literature for outsiders.

Now we come to the real point. Do you think that while the war is going on, it is very healthy that more Palestinians join the battle? When the peace will come, our representative will sit together with the friend of the other side, and after solving the military problems, they will look at other problems also. There are so many problems. Just take the water problem, which is very essential in the Middle East. I think that it is even more essential than the question of the refugees because it is a question of dying of thirst or of going to conquer Europe to bring water to the Middle East. In peace you can solve many problems, and in peace you also create new problems.

I’ll try to do my best as a human being to read the literature of yearning to go back, but I won’t go back to Baghdad, because the Baghdad which I loved so much, which I weep over in my dreams at night, has been shattered by Saddam Hussein and the American bombers. Now I have, as I said, lovely grandchildren, born in Israel, and I won’t leave them, even for Damascus. I myself feel like an immigrant in Israel, but my children and grandchildren tip the scale so that I do not feel God has dealt unjustly with me. They bring me deep joy, more than my ten novels do. When we are at peace, I think the two parties will sit together with sweet Arabic coffee and solve this question also.

Question:

have affected literature? Do you think that the religious fundamentalists on both sides

Michael: I don’t think that the Jewish fundamentalists in any way

influence Hebrew literature because they don’t recognize modern literature, and fortunately, nearly all the writers in Israel are so far from this stream in the Jewish religion that it does not affect the writing of literature in Israel in any way. The same is true in the Arab world. I don’t know that any Islamic fundamentalists appre- ciate modern literature to the point that they would affect it. Most

of the Islamic fundamentalists want to erase all literature because it is unhealthy, because it is dangerous. So now, the most beautiful Algerian, Iraqi, Syrian, and Lebanese literature is written in Eu- rope. They are afraid of fundamentalist movements from one side and from the regime on the other side, and it is very sad. The most courageous heroes in the Middle East are the Arab writers who are pressed between two efficient and dangerous forces-the funda- mentalists from one side and the regime from the other side. Amos Oz is not afraid of Rabin, but Rabin is afraid of Amos Oz.

Jubran: I agree with my friend Sami that fanatic fundamentalism does

not create literature. I t is a real danger only because it is a real danger to democracy. A writer or any other intellectual cannot create a book or a policy or music or painting without the full free climate of freedom, both individual and collective freedom of the society. Even in Israel, in which there is a stable democratic regime, I think the most extreme organized religious fanaticism is a danger to human rights, to democracy, but, thanks to God, it is one waged in words but not in weapons.

In Egypt, one of the most important scholars and intellectuals was killed because the extremist fundamentalists thought he is a propagating Westernized ideals and morals. Even the great and famous Nagib Mafouz who was nearly 80 years old, a man with a weak body, a man who does not see and hear normally as a result of illness, was attacked in the street by a brutal fanatic who accused him of being a traitor to Islamic literature and heritage. In Algiers, the most fanatic groupings are hunting intellectuals, writers, jour- nalists, musicians, actors, lady professors at the university who don’t dress exactly as the fundamentalists demand.

Therefore, the struggle for democracy in the Arab world and elsewhere is the struggle for the freedom of society, the freedom of intellectuals, and the very right of life of intellectuals. We can’t live physically without freedom, and we can’t live spiritually and create without freedom. The struggle against religious fanaticism is a part of the struggle for modernity, for development for pluralism, for human rights, for individual liberty, for the right to live as a human being. In the Arab world, there are three aims which are combined, each with the other: to achieve peace, to achieve democracy, and to achieve economic and social welfare. If we can’t achieve all three, there lurks a danger to the intellectuals and the literati and cultural life in our countries.

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Question:

tual life addressed in literature? Is that struggle between religious fanaticism and a freer spiri-

Jubran: Especially in Egypt where the regime principally supports

democracy and freedom, it is interesting to read literary magazines and the new literature. There is a fierce struggle to find this freedom in a sophisticated manner. First of all, religion is not the property of the fundamentalist fanatics. Therefore, one approach is to reveal the tolerant and humanistic origins of religion. Islam is a spiritual religion exactly like Christianity and Judaism. Therefore, they attempt to show the real and positive pages of Islamic civilization. Secondly, they attempt to convince the population that religious fanaticism, first of all, is a persecution of the people and a great danger to any possible development to the country. In Egypt last year, the losses to tourism were two million dollars, a result of the atmosphere of terror that was spread by the most extreme fanatic elements. The fanatics want the world to work according to their own laws and order, but the secular republic doesn’t do that. I, myself, am not the best believer in God, but I am ready to respect any man who believes in God and not do anything to humiliate the believer, directly or indirectly, or restrict his believing. The struggle in democracy is for pluralism, for full separation of religion from politics and the state.

The struggle of the Middle East at the end of the nineteenth century is ironically the same struggle that faced Europeans follow- ing the great French Revolution. We are lagging more than two hundred years behind civilization, and we want to be equal to other nations. Freedom is the basis for all kinds of development-in science, in agriculture-that overcome the problems of poverty. There are sad problems in the Arab world, and without democracy, it is impossible to solve them. Literature, especially novels and philosophical writings, attempts to wage the ideological battle for openness, for pluralism, and for tolerance in all fields of Middle East society.

Michael: I do not think that contemporary literature in Israel is much

concerned with the battle between fanaticism and secularism. We don’t see it as an imminent, direct danger that we need to write about it in our novels. Literature isn’t a newspaper. It is the result

of subconscious processes, and so it is like a retarded boy sometimes. It can take twenty or thirty years to respond. We are not such geniuses that we can write novels about these questions now. We talk about them in newspapers when we are asked to write about this matter, but we don’t see it yet as a danger to the literature. We see it as a danger to our inept democracy.

After the event of blasting the bus near Haifa, when thirty people went into the area and searched for two days for the fingers of young boys and the hairs of young girls in the trees, I was invited to say a word on television because it was one of the saddest days in Israel. I said, “You must know that Hamas isn’t fighting Israel now. Hamas knows very well that it can’t defeat Israel, just as Meir Kahan and his party know that they can’t defeat the PLO, but Hamas is fighting a war against Arafat, and what it is doing inside Israel is more against Arafat than against the Jews. Also the Kach and other small parties are doing their best not to fight against the fundamentalistic movements inside Palestinian forces but against Rabin. They fight against their own people, their own leadership. We must see that this is the question, this is the problem, because I am sure that Hamas and Kach are helping each other indirectly, and they need each other to do their work.

Question: To what extent do the clergy of the Middle East-Jewish,

Moslem, and Christian-speak out against the extremist faction with a voice of moderation and tolerance?

Michael: I am sorry to say that they are disappointing us. The three

religions were created with a vision of loving each other and the vision of peace, and we expect, most of all, from the Jewish, Christian, Muslim leaders to see and relearn the Koran, the New Testament, and the Torah. And it is a shame that I, the secular and the silent Jubran, have to explain to the clergy what their religion really is. I t is a sad problem.

I give lectures in Israel, everywhere from the north to the south, and I often travel in taxis. One afternoon, I was some 20 kilometers from Haifa in a taxi, and the driver said to me, “We must kill all the Arabs.” That was his kind of solution to the problems of the country. He was a religious man, and, because I was stunned by his state- ment, I tried to explain to him in a literary form what he had said.

I asked him if he would expect me to take a share in killing the

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Arabs. He said, yes. So I said, “Let us then divide the work between us. As an Israeli citizen, you will get an assignment of killing all the Arabs who live on a certain street in homes from number 20 to 35. You must go to every home with a pistol and kill every Arab from the first floor to the fourth floor. When you finish your work, you hear a child, a baby, crying in the fourth floor in number 26. You will go back to kill this baby because he’s Arab, and his cry is an Arabic cry.”

The taxi driver was silent. Then he said, ‘You are a very cruel man,” and we both were silent. Then he said, “I said that as a sort of speech. I didn’t intend that I myself would even kill an Arab soldier.”

I said, ‘You are a religious man, and you have a conscience, but maybe there is a madman beside you who hears what you say and will do exactly what you say. He will go to the fourth floor and kill the Arab child. How do you feel? This is what you are doing. You are teaching others not the real Jewish religion, but how to be mad.”

Jubran: I want to tell you that the great Mufti of the Palestinians now,

Sheikh ’Akram Sabri, absolutely opposes a fanatic fundamentalism, openly opposes any terrorist actions against Jews, opposes anti Jewish propaganda, and supports the peace process. The great Sheikh of the University of Al Azhar in Egypt, the most religious figure in the Islamic world, supports peace between Egypt and Israel, between Palestinians and Israel, and even the great Sheikh of Saudi Arabia made a special declaration saying that Islam and the Qur’an order Muslims to make peace with their enemies because a situation of peace between believers of God is the will of God. Among the Palestinians in West Bank and the Gaza Strip, not all the believers, not even a majority of the believers support the fanatical extremists. Among Jews, Goldstein and the slaughter he created are considered criminal. The striking majority of the religions figures in Israeli society opposed such a crime.

The tragedy is that the extremist elements are very extreme and well organized. The wariness of moderate believers is not as strong as the knife and the bomb of the terrorist, the so-called believers. I t is our duty is to prevent the extremists from having a monopoly over religion. Religion is the heritage of all humanity, and we must always strive to discover the general and the universal in Islam, in Christianity, and in Judaism. I’m sure you read some of the writings of Kahan, who is an extremist, but in Israel a very fine believer in God. He wrote a book called Peace in the Jewish Heritage,

Di@st of Middlk East Studies 51

and as a non-Jew I was fascinated to read such a book that gave me the impression that the soul and spirit of Judaism is absolutely not different of the soul and spirit of Islam.

But we must continue this struggle in order to bring Jews and Arabs and Christians and human beings in general together. For me there is only one division: good and bad. You can be good or bad if you are Jew or Muslim or Christian, ifyou are Chinese, American, Arab, Philippine, so we must do the best to see that humanistic ideals prevail in our individual and collective relations.

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