The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide
The pioneering autobiographical story of a British Zionist in her fifties who moves to Israel and chooses to live among 25,000 Muslims in the all-Arab Israeli town of Tamra, a few miles from Nazareth.Susan Nathan’s revelatory book about her new life across the ethnic divide in Israel is already creating international interest. At a time when Middle Eastern politics (in many ways central to the current world disorder) have become mired in endless tit-for-tat killings, Susan Nathan is showing – by her own daily example – that it is perfectly possible for Jews and Arabs to live peacefully together in a single community, recognising their common humanity.The author’s familiarity with the former injustices of apartheid South Africa enables her to draw telling comparisons with the state of Israel. The increasing segregation of, and discrimintation against, the million-strong Arabic population of Israel is something she witnesses at first hand, but in describing her experiences in Tamra she is as observant of Arab frailties as of Jewish oppression.Written with warmth, compassion and humour, ‘The Other Side of Israel’ is one courageous woman’s positive life-enhancing response to a situation in which entrenched attitudes lead only to more violence and bloodshed.
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SUSAN NATHAN
The Other Side of Israel
MY JOURNEY ACROSS
THE JEWISH-ARAB DIVIDE
In memory of my parents,Sam and Maisie Levy.
And for my children,Daniel and Tanya.
Table of Contents
The road to the other side of Israel is not signposted. It is a place you rarely read about in your newspapers or hear about from your television sets. It is all but invisible to most Israelis.
In the Galilee, Israel’s most northerly region, the green signs dotted all over the highways point out the direction of Haifa, Acre and Karmiel, all large Jewish towns, and even much smaller Jewish communities like Shlomi and Misgav. But as my taxi driver Shaher and I look for Tamra we find no signs. Or none until we are heading downhill, racing the other traffic along a stretch of dual carriageway. By a turn-off next to a large metal shack selling fruit and vegetables is a white sign pointing rightwards to Tamra, forcing us to make a dangerous last-minute lane change to exit the main road. Before us stretching into the distance is a half-made road, and at the end of it a pale grey mass of concrete squats within a shallow hollow in the rugged Galilean hills. Shaher looks genuinely startled. ‘My God, it’s Tulkaram!’ he exclaims, referring to a Palestinian town and refugee camp notorious among Israelis as a hotbed of terrorism.
A few weeks earlier, in November 2002, I had rung the removals company in Tel Aviv to warn them well in advance of my move to Tamra, a town of substantial size by Israeli standards, close to the Mediterranean coast between the modern industrial port of Haifa and the ancient Crusader port of Acre. Unlike the communities I had seen well signposted in the Galilee, Tamra is not Jewish; it is an Arab town that is home to twenty-five thousand Muslims. A fact almost unknown outside Israel is that the Jewish state includes a large minority of one million Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship. Comprising a fifth of the population, they are popularly, and not a little disparagingly, known as ‘Israeli Arabs’. For a Jew to choose to live among them is unheard of. In fact it is more than that: it is inconceivable.
When I told my left-wing friends in Tel Aviv of my decision all of them without exception were appalled. First they angrily dismissed my choice, assuming either that it was a sign of my perverse misunderstanding of Middle Eastern realities or that it was a childish attempt to gain attention. But as it became clear that my mind was made up, they resorted to more intimidatory tactics. ‘You’ll be killed,’ more than one told me. ‘You know, the Arabs are friendly to start with, but they’ll turn on you,’ advised another. ‘You’ll be raped by the men,’ said one more. Finally, another friend took me aside and confided darkly: ‘I have a telephone number for a special unit in the army. They can come in and get you out if you need help. Just let me know.’
The woman at the removals company was less perturbed. ‘Will it be possible for you to move me from Tel Aviv to Tamra?’ I asked, concerned that as far as I could discern no one was living as a Jew inside an Israeli Arab community. I told her that if they had a problem with the move, they should tell me now. ‘Madam, we will deliver your belongings to anywhere in the state of Israel,’ she reassured me.
I arranged for Shaher, who I had used often in Tel Aviv, to collect me from my apartment on the day of the move. On the two-hour journey north we would lead the way in his taxi, with the removal truck following behind. Shaher phoned the day before to reassure me. ‘I have been looking carefully at the road map and I’ve devised a route to the Galilee which won’t involve passing too many Arab villages,’ he told me. ‘But we are heading for an Arab town,’ I reminded him. ‘Why on earth would I be worried about the route?’ Shaher did not seem to get my point.
We set off early the next day. Shaher was soon announcing, unbidden, his concern at my move to Tamra. What followed was a surreal exchange, the first of many such conversations I would have with taxi drivers and other Jews I met after I started living in Tamra. ‘So why are you moving there?’ he asked several times, apparently not persuaded by my reply each time, ‘Because I want to.’ Finally, he changed tack: ‘You know it’s an Arab area?’ Yes, I said, I think I know that. ‘So have you got an apartment there?’ Yes. ‘How did you get an apartment?’ I rented it, I said, just as I had done in Tel Aviv. Under his breath I could hear him muttering, ‘But it’s an Arab area.’ Then suddenly, as though it were a vital question he should have asked much earlier, he said: ‘Do you have a gun?’ Why would I need a gun, I asked. ‘Because they might kill you.’ I told him he was talking nonsense. Silence separated us until his face changed again. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you must be working for the government and I didn’t know it.’ No, I said, I work just for myself. ‘But it’s an Arab area,’ he said again.
