Nearly six decades after its creation, Israel occupies
a semi-mythical place in the Arab mind. In popular culture, it is the land of brutal
occupation, political intrigue, social decadence and sophisticated espionage,
with a beautiful or cunning Mossad agent lurking behind every lamppost. Europe
once had its Iron Curtain; the Middle East still has its Zion Curtain.
Landing in Tel Aviv at an airport called Ben Gurion had all the makings of an Egyptian spy thriller. And for those in
search of "intrigue", my first introduction to Israel did not disappoint. Although Egyptian-born,
I was travelling on my Belgian passport. Airport security had obviously been
alerted about my imminent arrival and an official welcoming party was waiting
when I stepped off the plane.
When I left the airport two hours and four interviews
later, my first encounter with an Israeli taxi driver confirmed that I had very
much landed in the Middle East. He was a Moroccan Jew who had moved to Israel
as a teenager and could shame any Cairo cabbie with his colourful use of curses
and expletives and his love of Umm Kalthoum, the Arab world's legendary singing diva. The only western thing about
this scene was that he had turned on the taxi's meter.
The Israeli family I stayed with for a few days reminded me in so many
ways of home. Like the traditional set-up in Egypt, several generations of the
same family live together on the same plot, flowing in and out of each other's
spaces, sharing intimacies, food and resources, etc. The key difference was
that they were less patriarchal and more egalitarian than most Egyptian families.
"I don't understand how Europeans can leave home
so early and stay so distant from their families," said an exasperated
Zipora, the mother, sounding just like one of my Egyptian aunties, over a
sumptuous lunch she had prepared to feed twice the assembled people, just like
another of my aunts.
Throughout my time in Israel, it was constantly driven
home to me that the joking description in Egypt of Israelis as our errant
"cousins" had a very distinct ring of truth to it. After all, about
half the Jewish population of Israel came from Arab countries - that's not to
mention all the 1.2 million Palestinian holders of Israeli passports.
One Iraqi Jew I met in Jerusalem could do a passable imitation of
the Egyptian vernacular so popular in films and music across the region, loved
travelling to Egypt, was a professional oud player and sang in Arabic at weddings and barmitzvahs.
Israelis share with Arabs - particularly their Mediterranean neighbours
- a keen sense of Middle Eastern hospitality, a love of conversation and large
gatherings and spontaneity in public spaces. But just as Arabs do not realise
just how "Middle Eastern" Israelis are, I discovered that Israelis
are also largely ignorant of just how '"western" millions of Arabs
are. But, then again, in a conflict, it's tempting to portray your foe as
everything you're not.
I found it entertaining that at a barbecue where no
one was drinking except me with my solitary glass of wine, everyone seemed
convinced that "secular Arab" was some sort of mythical creature, a
semantic impossibility. Some guests looked at me with unrestrained dismay when
I recalled the amount of drinking that went on at the Cairo parties I used to
host or attend.
"Do you have alcohol in Egypt?" one
confounded guest actually inquired, causing me almost to choke on my wine.
"Of course, it's not the same with the Palestinians," another confidently
asserted. We later drank a toast to his memory at a local bar in Ramallah over
the surprisingly good Palestinian beer.
The idea that there are sizeable minorities of
Egyptians and other Arabs - counting in the millions – committed to secular
ideals, gender equality, sexual liberty, etc, was entirely contrary to the
vision that most Israelis I met entertained of the Arab world being a seething
ocean of Islamic fanaticism.
Of course, there are differences, and plenty of them.
Whereas a relative minority are socially liberal in Egypt, a relative majority
are so in Israel. An openly permissive city like Tel Aviv would be hard to find
anywhere in the Middle East, with the exception of Beirut.
Another key difference between Egypt and Israel is the
sheer diversity of the Israeli population. Egypt's 75 million citizens are
largely homogenous, despite some religious and racial variations. Israel is
like a racial microcosm of the world - a fairly unique riot of ethnicities,
races and cultures. And the fact that it has succeeded in managing all this
diversity to construct a functioning society and a competitive economy is
remarkable. Israel also leads the region in science and the knowledge sector.
Despite a certain lack of contemporary confidence,
Egypt, the oldest nation in the world, has the security of an ages-old identity
that has the permanence of the Nile or the pyramids. Whereas Egypt is the land
of the rooted, Israel - in contrast - is the land of the displaced controlling
millions of dispossessed.
Most of the Middle East suffers from a sense of
victimhood - in fact, Arabs and Israelis are unified, I discovered, in their
belief that they were betrayed by the British. However, the long shadow of the
Holocaust and earlier pogroms and the long-standing conflict with the Arabs has
transformed this into a full-blown persecution complex and the deep-seated fear
that the Arabs cannot be trusted - no matter what they say or do - because what
they really want is to drive Israel into the sea. That would partly explain why
Israel is the most militarised society I have ever seen and the fact that it
often hits first and forgets to ask the right questions later.
This immense level of insecurity may confound many of
my fellow Arabs because it flies in the face of Israel's undisputed military
might, its ambiguous nuclear arsenal and the fact that it is in occupation of
Arab land and not vice-versa. Whereas Israelis do not expect Arabs to lose
sleep over the estimated 600 nuclear warheads aimed our way, they are fixated
on the suspected nuclear weapons designs of Iran - however remote in the future
or unlikely they are to occur.
And here lies the biggest potential weapon in the Arab
arsenal: militant peace. Arabs should dialogue directly with Israelis and tell
them clearly and unequivocally that they want to live alongside them in warm
peace once they reach a settlement with the Palestinians and Syrians.
Paranoia was the name of the game during the Cold War
in Europe. After the Iron Curtain fell, people were confounded that we ever
feared the other side so much, especially with many of our former
"enemies" now members of the EU. I am optimistic that the same will occur
in the Middle East once the Zion Curtain is lifted.
This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s
Comment
is Free section on 13 May 2007.
ã2007
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