The Only Way To Keep A Dream,

I Often Write About Reconciling. Reconciling, Or Maybe Half-reconciling Between Antagonists, Between People Who Are Deadly Enemies. I Write About Reconciliation, But Not As A Miracle, As A Slow, Gradual Process Of Mutual Discovery - Discovering One Another. I Write About Sad, Sober, Sometimes Heart-breaking Compromises.

There Are Certain Concepts, Which Exist In English, And Are Unthinkable, Untranslatable Into Hebrew And Vice Versa.

Of Course, We Carry Inside Of Ourselves Our Parents. Even When They Are Dead, We Carry Them Inside Ourselves. And They Are Carrying Inside Themselves Their Dead Parents And So On And So Forth. There Is A Legacy Of Language And Culture And Religion. In Some Cases, Family Stories Told By Grandparents To Little Grandchildren. When I Say My Novels Are Set In Israel In The Last Seventy Years, This Entails The Fact That They Begin Hundreds Or Thousands Of Years Earlier In Time. Everybody Comes From Somewhere.

The Palestinians Have No Other Land. They Are Absolutely Right About This. The Israeli Jews Also Have No Other Land And They Are Absolutely Right About This. It Is A Tragedy Of Two Peoples Claiming The Same Very Small Country - Very Small, About The Size Of New Jersey. And Both Of Them Are Right. Both Of Them Have No Other Homeland As Peoples. As Individuals, Maybe, But Not As A People.

Each Time I Have The Urge In Me To Make A Statement Or Send A Message Or To Issue A Manifesto, I Don't Bother To Write A Novel. I Write An Article And Publish It In A Popular Newspaper, Or I Make A Television Appearance. I Would Not Waste Five Years Of My Life In Order To Send To The Israeli Readers A Simple Message Such As, "let Us Change A Policy Or Stop The Settlements," Or, "let Us Strive For Peace." This Is Not What It Is About.