The Search for Identity in Israeli Arab Fiction: Atallah Mansour, Emile Habiby, and Anton Shammas

In a recent (1996) interview with Hilit Yeshurum, an Israeli journalist and translator, Mahmud Darwish, a leading Palestinian poet, discussed the indefinable borderlines between Israeli Jewish and Israeli Arab identities. Despite the politically adversarial position of the two peoples, Darwish perceives the situation as an interactive process which brings them together in a problematic, yet inextricable relationship. "It is impossible," Darwish claims, "to ignore the place of the Israeli in my identity . . . Israelis have changed the Palestinians and vice versa. The Israelis are not the same as they were when they came, and the Palestinians are not the same people either. Each dwells inside the other . . . The other is a responsibility and a test . . . Will a third emerge out of the two? This is the test." 1 As his political activities have demonstrated, 2 Darwish is far from being a supporter of the Zionist state; nonetheless, he maintains that the Zionist project has created a connection, perhaps even a bond, between the two peoples. He sees the interpenetration of the two identities as a potential for a "third"; that is, the possibility of creating a new modus vivendi which will include both Arabs and Jews.