The following is a snippet from a PBS interview
with noted Israeli novelist Amos Oz (go to http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june02/oz_1-23.html
for the entire interview).
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Amos
Oz, who was born in Jerusalem in 1939, has published 18 books and
hundreds of essays in Israeli and in international magazines and
newspapers.
His most recent novel, The Same Sea, was published in United States
last year. Oz's works have been translated into 30 languages in
over 35 countries. Since 1967, he has also been involved with various
groups within the Israeli peace movement.
Amos Oz, thanks for being with us.
AMOS OZ: It's good to be with
you.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You once
said that you hoped that the tragedy of the relationship between
Israel and the Palestinians would be Chekhovian and not a Shakespearean
tragedy. What did you mean, and is it becoming more Shakespearean?
AMOS OZ: Well, my definition
of a tragedy is a clash between right and right. And in this respect,
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a tragedy, a clash between
one very powerful, very convincing, very painful claim over this
land and another no less powerful, no less convincing claim.
Now such a clash between right claims can be revolved in one of
two manners. There's the Shakespeare tradition of resolving a tragedy
with the stage hewed with dead bodies and justice of sorts prevails.
But there is also the Chekhov tradition. In the conclusion of the
tragedy by Chekhov, everyone is disappointed, disillusioned, embittered,
heartbroken, but alive. And my colleagues and I have been working,
trying...not to find the sentimental happy ending, a brotherly love,
a sudden honeymoon to the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy, but a Chekhovian
ending, which means clenched teeth compromise.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And you
had some hope over recent years that you were on your way to that.
In your writings you expressed that hope. Do you still have that
hope?
AMOS OZ: More than ever. We
all know the bad news. Let me share some of the good news with you
for a change.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: That
would be great.
AMOS OZ: I have seen for the
first time in 100 years of conflict, the two peoples -- the Israeli
people and the Palestinian people -- are ahead of their leaderships.
The two peoples know now that in the end of the day, there will
be a two-state solution. They don't like the solution. You will
find thousands and thousands of heartbroken people on both sides,
but they know it. If you passed a survey asking every Israeli Jew
and every Palestinian Arab, "What would you regard as a just
solution?" Not "what would you regard as a fair solution,"
but, "what do you think is going to happen at the end of day?"
I suppose the vast majority would say a compromise and a two-state
solution. Now that's a step forward.
Assessing the Israeli-Palestinian dispute
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What
do you make of this current situation? Are you more worried now
that you have been for many years?
AMOS OZ: I am more angry with
both leaderships than I have been for many years. I think Arafat
and Sharon are almost handcuffed to one another in the sense of
being the slaves of the past, of the traumatized past -- lack of
trust, lack of goodwill, lack of vision, lack of imagination and
lack of political courage. In many ways, I regard Sharon and Arafat
as birds of a feather.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you
see them... I mean, as a writer they are fabulous literary characters,
these people, each carrying, each haunted by their own past and
confronting each another now. Do you see them that way?
AMOS OZ: Well, the two -- not
just the two leaders, the two nations -- are haunted by their pasts.
It may be interesting to point out that both the Israeli Jew and
Palestinian Arab are in victims of Europe in two different ways.
The Arabs were victimized by Europe through colonialism, imperialism,
oppression and exploitation; the Jews through suppression, discrimination
and, finally, mass murder in the Nazi period.
Now, two victims of the same oppressor do not necessarily become
brothers. Two children of the same cruel parent do not necessarily
hug one another. Sometimes the worst rivalries, in private life
as well as in communal life, are precisely the conflict between
two victims of the same oppressor. Two children of same cruel parent
look at one another and see in each other the image of the cruel
parent or the image of their past oppressor. This is very much the
case between Jew and Arab: It's a conflict between two victims.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And how
do you think that September 11 affected this conflict you have written
so much about over all these years, been so much a part of?
AMOS OZ: In a strange sense,
I felt it was a sobering lesson for everybody. If we don't stop
somewhere, if we don't accept an unhappy compromise, unhappy for
both sides, if we don't learn how to unhappily coexist and contain
our burned sense of injustice -- if we don't learn how to do that,
we end up in a doomed state. m
Amos Oz is also the author of Israel, Palestine
and Peace: Essays.
