Shalom L'Shalom

The old city of Jaffa is a beautiful park-like area with a few restaurants, artisan shops, an historic church and a wide promenade and plaza overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It’s a favorite spot for brides and grooms to be photographed so it’s a common to see both Arab and Jewish wedding parties in this picturesque setting just before dusk. At one edge of the old city is a windowless building that looks something like an underground warehouse. This spot is home to the Arabic-Hebrew Theatre of Yafo, a cross-cultural center that hosts plays, films, and musical events for adults and children, sometimes in Arabic and sometimes in Hebrew. It’s a simple space that consists of a café and small theatre that seats about 100.

Last week, my daughter Hannah and I went to see a one-man show there performed in Hebrew by a Palestinian actor/playwright named Hashem Yassin from Rafiach in the Gaza Strip. The play was billed as an autobiographical account of Yassin’s life for the past 24 years in Israel. That was enough to draw me in. A Palestinian from Gaza, performing in Hebrew and living in Israel for 24 years? How could that be? I thought Gazans could only get day permits to work in Israel. How could he be living here for so long? Since the Second Intifida and all the more so, since the devastating war there last year, weren’t Gazans totally persona non grata in Israel? Yet here was this Palestinian actor claiming he had lived in Israel for more than twenty years! The playbill went on to explain that Yassin came to Israel on a “personal mission” to work for peace through the arts. Indeed, the play is his account of how that went.

The set was a bare stage covered in a thin layer of sand with a single chair. Sounds of the sea ebbed and flowed throughout the 60 minute play. Hashem’s monologue was in fact, his conversation with the sea, looking to it for answers to whether he should stay or go, and whether his work makes any difference at all. Snippets of his life as an actor and as a Palestinian living in Tel Aviv unfolded through his stylized and engaging movements and storytelling. He spoke of his hope that art could serve as a bridge to enhance understanding and build trust among Arabs and Jews. Yet, the reality of his experience made it very difficult to hold onto this hope. He spoke bitterly of his frustration with the “so-called Peace business” that put on arts festivals during the halcyon days after the Oslo Peace Accords where he was continually cast in stereotypical roles as either a terrorist or a collaborator. “Jews can’t see us as anything else,” he said. More powerful to me were the personal stories he told about what happened to his relationships with Jews during the Second Intifada. In one account, he told how he desperately tried to get in touch with a friend who worked at the Dizengoff Center, after a suicide bombing attack there. When he finally reached her, she said, “oh, I thought maybe it was you who was the bomber.”

There was no doubt that the core message Yassin wanted to convey was that after more twenty years of living and working amongst Jews, he was still considered the enemy. Here he was living in Tel Aviv, the most tolerant and open city in Israel, and yet every three months, he has to report to the Ministry of Interior and get his temporary residency permit extended for another three months. He is still the other, still a suspect, still not to be trusted.

“I am an Arab” he said, “nothing more”. But, what he seemed to want most of all, was simply to be recognized as a human being. In Hebrew, he pointed out, the words artist and humanist share a common root and indeed, Yassin’s vision for this stretch of sand along the Mediterranean is a humanistic one. Yet, that’s not so easy for a non-Jew in the Jewish state. “Speaking good Hebrew doesn’t make me a Zionist” he said. And that’s the essence of the dilemma.

Yassin’s vision is grounded in the hope and belief that Jews and Palestinians can together build a place where all can live in mutual respect and peace. It’s an idealized vision that asks us to put aside history, guilt, and blame. To look forward rather than backward – hardly simple for either side to do. Likewise, his vision of universal peace, sadly goes against Jewish particularity and therefore, challenges the soul of the State. Thus, he questions whether the Jews really do want peace or whether they want to “encase themselves in a ghetto that they call a state.” It’s a tough question, maybe the toughest one confronting this place and the one that most people least want to confront.

After the performance itself, Yassin came back out and engaged the audience in a conversation. Here, he dropped his artistic persona and his remarks seemed more textured, ambivalent, and human. It was clear that he admires and maybe even loves Tel Aviv and Israel and is also incredibly frustrated by it. He goes home to Rafiach for visits and sees he has no future there, certainly not as an artist. Yet, he is angry that he is not able to fully realize his artistic potential in Israel since he is always cast in stereotypical roles. He vacillates between hope and despair, and yet still clings to the idea that art is a bridge towards mutual understanding. After all, he says, “We Palestinians share a lot in common with the Jews. No one likes either of us.” Not exactly the best reason for solidarity and respect, but maybe it’s a start……

The title of the play, Shalom l’Shalom embodies the very ambivalence that is at the heart of his life and his mission. Do we read it as “Hello to Peace” or “Goodbye to Peace?” Do we give into despair and accept that intransigence and impossibility of attaining a peace that fully recognizes the humanity and particularity of both Arab and Jew? Shouldn’t that be our ultimate goal? Isn’t the answer in our hands?