The Palestinian - Israeli Identification Conflict in Arabesques

Arabesques, a semi-autobiographical novel by Anton Shammas, deals with political and identity issues in Israel. In order to grasp the value this text, a basic understanding of the plot is essential. Shammas divides his book into two distinct, related plots and intertwines them. The "Tale" sections of the book focus on Shammas' origins and tell his family history; they are told in a free-flowing, non-linear, arabesque style. Shammas describes his "Tale" writing style when commenting on his uncle's storytelling methods, "His [Uncle Yusef] stories were plaited into one another, embracing and parting, twisting and twining in the infinite arabesque of memory... All of them, however, flowed around him in a swirling current of illusion that linked beginnings to endings, the inner to external, the reality to tale" (Shammas 226, 227). The "Teller" sections narrate a more modern story of Shammas. The linear progression of these segments makes this storyline more direct and easy to follow. Eventually, Shammas ties these two threads together in a surprising ending.

The beauty of this novel lies in Shammas' attempt to define an identity for someone who seems to have fallen between the cracks of changing cultures. Anton Shammas was born in 1950 in Fassuta, a village in Northern Israel. He is an Israeli citizen and a Christian Palestinian who considers himself more Israeli and Palestinian (Friedman). As his background implies, he is an individual torn between Palestinian and Jewish cultures, and he makes reference to this identity crisis in the book through imagery of an elusive treasure cave covered by a boulder. The fictional Anton Shammas, despite his efforts, fails to move this boulder with a magical phrase and reach the treasure cave; in the same way, the real Shammas searches for an elusive, true identity in life (Ginsburg 192). Yet, Shammas also refers to Arabesques as "my real identity card," because through the text Shammas attempts to answer his identity crises and politically define a group of people with which he can associate (qtd. in Friedman).

Shammas creates this group by choosing to first publish Arabesques in Hebrew, the language of Israel typically reserved for Jewish writers. Hebrew has always been seen as the exclusive language of the Jewish people, and they currently hold the power and identity of a "true" citizen of Israel. Shammas implies this second-rate citizen nature of non-Jewish Israelis in an interview, where he states, "The question is not who is a Jew, but who is an Israeli? I tried in a literary form to prove to myself and others that there is something 'Israeli' that is not necessarily Jewish" (qtd. in Friedman). Yehoshua Bar-On, the main Jewish Israeli character, even refers to the fictional Anton Shammas as "my Jew," despite his Palestinian heritage, because the literary Shammas, like the real Shammas, considers himself Israeli (Shammas 80). A. B. Yehoshua, a prominent Jewish writer, describes the current Jewish Israeli mindset towards non-Jewish Israelis as he states to Anton Shammas in a debate:

If you want to live in a state with a distinct Palestinian identity, with an original Palestinian culture, go, take your bags and move one hundred meters eastward to the Palestinian state that will rise next to Israel. Your condition will be far better than that of most national minorities in the world who do not have such an option. But if you stay, and I greet you. Welcome, you're a minority. . . . Otherwise, what will happen? A Palestinian state will rise and then Israeli Arabs will demand a multi-national or multi-religious state like the United States, even within Israel's boundaries. So why should we call it Israel? Let us ask the computer to give us a name and a flag, that would be more appropriate. But why do Anton Shammas and his friends think such things? Because, like the PLO, they still view the Jews as a religious group rather than as a nation. (qtd. in Gluzman 324)

Through this context, the context in which Shammas wrote Arabesques, the novel cries out for Israel to be a truly democratic state, not a state reserved for a specific religion and nationality. By publishing his work in Hebrew, Shammas makes a clear statement that he considers the Jewish people a religious group, not the exclusive true citizens of the state of Israel. Through this action, he creates an identity for himself as a true Israeli citizen, not a second-rate citizen of Israel.

These implications of Arabesques add to the value and beauty of this book by providing insight to influences behind the feelings of Arab-Israeli relations. Arabesques does not merely seek to entertain or to record the life of a Christian Arab Israeli and his family. It calls for the redefining of Israel from a uni-racial, uni-national state to a multicultural state, one that provides an equal identity to Jewish Israelis and non-Jewish Israelis alike. The book is a masterpiece because it creates an identity for Shammas while reflecting the restless, impermanent feeling of not having an identity through its free-flowing, arabesque style.

Works Cited

Ginsburg, Shai. ""The Rock of our very Existence": Anton Shammas's Arabesques and the Rhetoric of Hebrew Literature." Comparative Literature 58.3 (2006): 187-204. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. Davidson Coll. Lib., Davison, NC. 19 March 2009. .

Gluzman, Michael. "The Politics of Intertextuality in Anton Shammas's Arabesques." Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 3.3 (2004): 319-36. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. Davidson Coll. Lib., Davison, NC. 19 March 2009. .

Friedman, Thomas. "I Too Am Israeli, One Arab Declares (in Hebrew)." New York Times (1857-Current file) Jan 21 1987: A4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2005). ProQuest. Davidson Coll. Lib. Davidson, NC. 19 Mar. 2009

Shammas, Anton. Arabesques. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988.