O pograniczu: kryzys tożsamości Palestyńczyków w Państwie Syjonistycznym. Twórczość Emila Habibi

Abstract

The establishment of the Zionist state signified a twofold exclusion of Israeli Arabs/Palestinians. As Palestinians, they became a culturally and politically marginalized and often ignored minority in the Jewish State; as Israelis, they turned into an estranged and often vilified segment of the Palestinian people. The narrative of the Arab defeat has obliterated the narrative of the defeated. In his three novels – The Secret Life of Saeed, The Pessoptimist (1974), Ah'tiye (1985), and Saraya, the Ogre's Daughter (1991) – Emile Habiby, Israeli Arab, Communist, Parliament member, and editor of the Arab Communist daily, presents a courageous and complex attempt to forge the narrative of the Israeli Arab. Habiby’s representations of Israeli Palestinian identity in the reality of the Zionist state are firmly grounded in the consciousness of the Palestinian national, cultural, and political loss as well as in the memory of Arab history and literary heritage. The imaginary search for the abandoned treasure or the betrayed and forgotten lover takes place in the geographical and political reality of the Zionist state. The curving and curling arabesque-like genre allows Habiby to combine the present and the past in a fascinating pastiche of lyrical elegies, fantastic visions, and satirical representations of both Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. Habiby’s poetics presents an identity shaped by the politics of difference. Suspended between Palestinian past and Israeli present, Habiby’s autobiographical narrators belong to neither, yet live in both. Though Israeli citizens, they identify with the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. While resenting their exclusion from Israeli mainstream, they nonetheless reclaim their status as Israeli citizens. Habiby’s work documents the torment of life on borderlines. At the same time, the writer's artistic achievement demonstrates that the Israeli Arab existence of double otherness has a voice capable of defying exclusion.