West Bank Story
WALLER, HAROLD M.
West Bank Story The Yellow Wind By David Grossman Translated by Haim Watzman Farrar Straus Giroux. 216 pp. $17.95. Reviewed by Harold M. Waller Professor of political science, McGill...
...Appearing as the current uprising of the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is entering its fourth month, the book gives dimension to Israel's gravest crisis since the 1973 Yom Kippur War...
...Imagine what would have happened if the 1967 war had turned out differently, if the attacking Arab nations had conquered Israel and occupied the entire country...
...He knows about the damage done by terrorism and he knows about Palestinian hatred for the Jews...
...It may be rejoined that the professional political types have not had much success in the last two decades, so why not try heeding a well-meaning amateur...
...Grossman is a writer, not a political analyst...
...some are by nature intractable and may require what seems like an inordinate amount of time to resolve...
...Life as a whole is unpleasant under the military regime...
...Seen in this blinkered way, the occupation has to appear unacceptable, a denial of the Palestinians' basic rights...
...Thus The Yellow Wind leads inexorably toward the conclusion that Israel should immediately pull out of the West Bank and Gaza...
...His style is superb...
...To be sure, this purported solution, so startling in its simplicity, would do much to assuage the guilt felt by many Israelis over the occupation, and it has gained currency since the uprising began...
...Virtually every Israeli policymaker, though, considers a hasty withdrawal from the occupied territories a highly risky course of action...
...Much of the criticism directed at Israel these days is based on the underlying assumption that the occupation is simply illegitimate, that Israel has no business being in the territories...
...Grossman is not naïve...
...So is the hatred-a hatred that must make any person of good will despair about the prospects for finding a just solution to the Palestinian problem...
...Yet if through some miracle Israel and the Palestinians were to come to terms with each other, presumably creating an independent Palestinian state in the process, would that put an end to the belligerence the Arab countries, or even the Palestinians, have shown toward their Jewish neighbor...
...Grossman does not pause to contemplate the question...
...Whoever does not agree to speculate in this way about the future need only glance backward...
...The West Bank and Gaza Palestinian Arabs are not accorded the full rights of Israeli citizens...
...Furthermore, it is not obligated to quit them, except in the context of a peace treaty resolving the dispute that triggered the Six Day War in the first place...
...The feelings of frustration, futility and powerlessness expressed in the violent demonstrations of the teenagers who have formed the front line of the revolt are all captured here...
...We sweat with the Arab workers in Israeli factories scraping out a meager existence illegally under unfair working conditions...
...To whom would he have talked...
...He should consider that the professionals, too, may have apprehensions of disaster...
...Rather, he focuses on portraying the lives of various ordinary people he encountered during a seven-week sojourn in the region historically called Judea and Samaria-and named the West Bank by the Jordanians after they conquered it in 1948...
...And if it lasts, it will exact a deadly price...
...But Grossman is so overwhelmed by what he has observed that he cannot help finally telling us about the occupation: "It is not a question of who is right, we orthey, Right or Left...
...Many of them came from Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Ramie, Lydda, and other areas that have been part of Israel since the 1949 armistice...
...Grossman is determinedly ahistorical...
...Injustices have been perpetrated...
...At least he is careful not to go much beyond the limited material he presents...
...As the author patiently records their stories, striving to be the neutral, nonjudgmental observer, the contradictions and ironies and harsh realities of daily existence emerge, as do occasional glimpses of humanity...
...Indeed, an implicit theme of The Yellow Wind-and other analyses of the current uprising in the occupied territories-is that Israel is essentially embroiled in a conflict with the Palestinian people...
...In the first case, one country was occupied by another waging a war of aggression...
...in the second, the aggressor country was occupied as a result of having been defeated by other countries acting in self-defense...
...One may reasonably conclude, therefore, that the international community has validated Israel's status as the responsible occupying power pending a peace settlement...
...It is a question of facts and numbers, and a few other things in the fuzzy area between dogs and people...
...These are the places they long for and intend to retrieve at all costs...
...He has done a masterful job of describing the distressing aspects of the occupation on the human level, where the contrast with an ideal world is most sharply etched-and therein lies a danger...
...The history of the world proves that the situation we preserve here cannot last for long...
...He transports the reader to and fro in the West Bank, visiting Arabs, Jews, the young and the old, refugees, settlers, and long-term inhabitants...
...In its name many mistakes have been made...
...If one accepts that proposition, thenrebellion is justified and attempting to repress it is not...
...It explains, for example, why there was a difference between the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1944 and the Allied occupation of Germany after the War...
...To the author's credit, too, no reader of the original Hebrew version-commissioned by the Israeli weekly Koteret Rashit and published as a special issue marking the 20th anniversary last June of the Six Day War-could have been surprised by the turn of events in the occupied territories...
...David Grossman is impatient because he sees disaster looming...
...Reviewed by Harold M. Waller Professor of political science, McGill University When David Grossman began writing The Yellow Wind early last year, he could not have imagined how timely its American publication would be...
...We share the pain and perplexity of the terrorist's father whose house is destroyed for reasons he cannot fathom...
...But if it cannot be answered unequivocally in the affirmative, the rationale for abandoning the West Bank and Gaza becomes much less compelling...
...Still, in the framework he has constructed for himself, Grossman has drawn a gripping and ultimately unsettling picture of life under the occupation...
...None of these issues is taken up by Grossman...
...If, however, one starts from the alternative position-that Israel is a legitimate occupying power under international law because it came to control the territories in the course of defending itself against aggression-then Israel is in fact required to preserve public order in the West Bank and Gaza...
...Would there have been an Arab David Grossman meandering through occupied Israel in 1987, crying out about the injustice and immorality of the occupation...
...He is apparently aware that although the views of a small selection of individuals can often suggest broader insights, one must always be wary about drawing general conclusions in such circumstances...
...But whether or not he recognizes the legitimacy of the occupation, his thrust is patently that it should be ended without waiting for an overall peace settlement...
...In this connection it should be noted that while UN Security Council Resolution 242 speaks of the inadmissibility of acquiring territory by war and calls for the exchange of land for peace within secure and recognized boundaries, it pointedly refrains from labeling Israel an aggressor, nor does it demand immediate withdrawal from the occupied areas...
...Yet not all problems admit of quick solutions...
...Even those who advocate territorial compromise, like Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, insist that this has to be part of a peace agreement, not a unilateral move to save Israel's soul...
...Grossman, a well-regarded young Israeli novelist who is politically on the Left, does not really explicate the problem...
...there are no solutions openly advanced...
...But you will not learn how all this developed from reading The Yellow Wind...
...The occupation is, of course, ugly...
...Moreover, his own reportage makes clear that the refugees he met (not to mention those in Lebanon) won't be satisfied with a state in the West Bank and Gaza...
...Weempathize with those who suffer indignities when crossing the Allenby Bridge from Jordan to the West Bank (although Grossman barely touches on the justification for the security measures that give rise to those indignities...
...For the issue at hand is a political one and any meaningful analysis must after all concentrate on the governmental level in the real world, where politicians frequently have to choose among unpleasant options...
...The wider setting of the hostilities is discounted...
...Nevertheless, in skillfully having his subjects speak for themselves Grossman leaves the unmistakable impression that he believes the occupation must be ended quickly and, perhaps more important, that it is the essence of the problem...
...Yet history does matter...
Vol. 71 • April 1988 • No. 6
