Do Not Cut Lose From Your Longings

Israel Is A Fulfillment, And As A Fulfillment, It Is Flawed. Dreams Fulfilled Are Imperfect. And, Israel Is Imperfect, Of Course It Is - A Far Cry From The Monumental Dreams Of The Founding Fathers. One Of The Reasons Is That Their Dreams Were Unrealistic. They Were Bigger Than Life. These Were Messianic Dreams, Dreams About Total Redemption For The Jews, For The World. Such Dreams Do Not Come True, Not In Their Entirety.

In Some Of The Israeli Media, But Not All, They Read About Very Nasty Things Done By Israeli Settlers And Soldiers To Palestinian Arabs. This Is A Pain In The Neck For Many Israelis. They Say: Leave Us Alone, What Can We Do About It? Or They Say: Look At Syria, Look At Iraq, The West Bank Is Paradise By Comparison. I Was One Of The First To Say, Shortly After The Six-day War, That Occupation Is Corrupting. It Corrupts The Occupier And, In A Different Way, It Corrupts The Occupied.

I Follow The Way People Change. I Follow The Way People, Who Are Very Antagonized To One Another Become Very Close To One Another And Vice-versa. Sometimes I Follow The Way People Who Are Intimately Close To Each Other Move Apart. This Is My Business As A Novelist. It Is Not About Positions And Ideas.

Almost Without Exception, My Novels Are Rooted In Israel Because That's The Place I Know Well.

What Is Likely To Happen? Either An Escalation Of Violence Or An Entire Change In The Whole Middle East Theater. It May Well Happen, And I Say This To My Palestinian Friends, That The Palestinians Have In A Certain Way Missed Their Hour. They Had Their Moment When The World's Public Opinion Was Behind Them, And A Considerable Part Of The Israeli Public Was Willing To Compromise With Them.