Israeli author, Israeli-Arab poet call for peace

Against a backdrop of paintings by Israeli and Palestinian artists in the Arthur Ross Gallery of the Fisher Fine Arts Library, Israeli author Sami Michael and Israeli-Arab poet Salem Jubran spoke about their hopes for peace in the Middle East. "I believe the national wisdom and personal strength of Israelis and Arabs will overcome the problems we face," Jubran said. Jubran, co-director of the Jewish-Arab Center for Peace in Israel, discussed the developments leading to current peace efforts. For many years, he said, Israelis and Arabs believed they could "arrange their lives in isolation from the other." The Arab-Israeli wars convinced Middle Easterners that "it is impossible and immoral to throw out Israel and deny the Palestinians a homeland," he explained. "The sorrow of a mother has no nationalistic identification," Jubran said, adding that Arab-Israeli citizens endured a "double suffering" when Israel and Arab states fought. "When the agreement was signed, I had happiness for the beginning of the end of my people's suffering, and the end of wars for the Israeli state," he said. Michael discussed the adverse effects of war on artistic expression. "The writer needs a stable life around him to write an emotionally unstable piece," he said. "I need peace so much to do my job." Michael added that it is difficult for Israelis to remain calm because most of them listen to the news every half hour, and their children are required to serve in the military. "When my son was taken to the front for war, I couldn't write for months," he said. When Israeli leaders turned to him, as a pre-eminent writer, for advice on the peace process, Michael felt "threatened." "We don't even know how to do our own jobs," he said, admitting he was having difficulty writing his latest novel. "How can we give advice on how to run the country?" Michael predicted that with peace, future generations would not see poetry about the Arab–Israeli conflict as real literature. Despite his uneasiness about giving advice, Michael commented on the need for education and security for Palestinians and Israelis. "We must prevent Palestinian children from seeing their fathers killed in the streets, and Israeli children from seeing their fathers blown up on buses," Michael said. Salem added that Israeli and Palestinian children should be taught Arabic and Hebrew "not to know their enemies, but to know their neighbors."

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