/ARTS WEEKLY/MIDEAST: The ‘Intifadah’ Comes to Stage

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Beverly Andrews

LONDON, Apr 15 2003 (IPS) - These days mark the start of one of Israel’s s most important trials in years, the court martial of Jonathan Ben Artzi, nephew of former hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is charged along with nine others with refusing to do his compulsory military service.

He, along with a growing number of young Israeli men, are taking a stand in protest at the role of the Israeli Defense Force’ss activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The problem of ‘refuseniks’ (as they are called in Israel) is the theme of Julia Pascal’s latest play entitled ‘Crossing Jerusalem’. The play not only examines the reasons why many refuse military service, but also holds up a mirror to a society which is divided not only along the lines of Israeli and Palestinian but in many ways against itself.

The play focuses on the character of Gideon, a handsome Israeli who is happily married and the father of a young daughter. But beneath this apparent calm lurks a soul still haunted by memories from the past. Memories of his own military service during Israel’s occupation of the Lebanon, a pivotal time in Israeli history when many felt that the role of the army radically changed forever.

Gideon faces the prospect of being called up yet again to serve, this time in the occupied territories. He is forced to confront the demons of his past.

In examining the life of this young man, Julia Pascal also looks at the divisions, which exist in his family. Married to a beautiful Arab-Jew, he has to face the constant disapproval of his European mother, a mother still haunted by the Holocaust and who in turn refuses to see the injustices which are taking place daily in her own land.

As she sells houses and apartments to new Jewish arrivals she refuses to acknowledge the fact that many of these homes were formerly owned by Palestinian occupants. A chilling and ironic parallel to the European past of many Israeli Jews.

‘Crossing Jerusalem’ was written by Julia Pascal in 2002. She states, ”I spent most of 2002 writing this play, a year which has been the bloodiest in Israeli and Palestinian post-1948 history. This is not a drama documentary but a fiction rooted in the everyday lives of Israeli and Arabs during the second ‘intifadah’.”

”I decided to set the play in March before the Israeli occupation of Jenin, and when it seemed wrongly, that life could never be bleaker,” Pascal adds.

The remarkable thing about ‘Crossing Jerusalem’ is that its focus is not solely on the effect of the current crisis on Israelis, but the play also looks at the plight of Palestinians.

A friend, Sammy, owns the restaurant the family goes to in order to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of Gideon’s wife. Sammy, an Arab Christian, tries as best he can to avoid the present conflict. He cheerfully says to Gideon’s stepfather, when asked about his life: ”work, I eat and I make love to my wife, for me life is good.”

It is though not a stretch of the imagination to realise that Sammy’s seeming indifference to the current political turmoil is perhaps a defense mechanism constructed to allow him as best he can to carry on with his life.

His young waiter Yusuf is not so fortunate, an engineer student forced to end his studies with the closure of universities by the Israeli authorities. He has to constantly face the problem of trying to persuade his hate-filled brother against the pull of martyrdom. For Yusuf’s brother Sharif, all Israelis are legitimate targets since in his eyes they are all responsible for the hardships in his life.

But Pascal acknowledges that this kind of fanaticism exists on both sides in this extraordinary play, a fanaticism which stems from years of bitterness and entrenched political views.

She says: ”The prime minister’s life was taken by a young man of my age who grew up not far from my playground. Indeed Yigal Amir, with his murderous idealism, resembles the members of the young generation living opposite who wrap themselves in the Palestinian flag and girdle their waists with kilogrammes of explosives to commit suicide in crowded shopping malls.”

Hate is not the only emotion, which these two communities share. ‘Crossing Jerusalem’ also highlights the possessive chauvinism directed at women in their community.

Despite the apparent liberal lives that Israeli women appear to live. Pascal appears to argue that their men’s attitudes are perhaps not that different from their Palestinian counterparts. Gideon erupts in rage at the sight of his wife innocently talking to Yusuf. He then proceeds to demand to know about every relationship she has ever had, making it implicit that her past behaviour matters where his is considered irrelevant.

In a land soaked in blood, it becomes almost impossible to overcome this wall of hatred, a wall that has been built on the corpses of victims from both communities over generation.

This is a point the play makes when Gideon’s wife tries to help Yusuf and promises to give him money, money he desperately needs to get his brother out of the country and in his mind save his life.

But this brief flicker of hope is extinguished as the two meet again at a local hospital where Gideon has been taken after having been fatally injured by a suicide bomber. That bomber was Yusuf’s younger brother. So, the cycle of hate is born again, this time in a younger generation.

‘Crossing Jerusalem’ is one of the most balanced and thoughtful works on the current tragedy of Israel to have been produced in recent years. Its humanity extends to all its characters but ultimately, its message reflects the tragedy of that land and it is a message devoid of hope.