Peace and Conflict Studies - Spring 2014

Peace and Conflict Studies Volume 21, Number 1 14 Fictiviim ), for example, the only way the Jewish-Israeli protagonist can create a dialogue with his Palestinian co-workers is by pretending to be mute, and so only by not talking can he attempt to speak a common language with them. Likewise, in the novel A Trumpet in the Wadi ( Hatsutsra bavadi ) by Michael (1987), the only dialog of equals is between Alex, a Jewish-Russian immigrant who does not speak Hebrew, and Huda, the Arab who teaches him the language of the nation that oppresses her. And some of the Israeli movies of the period are bilingual, spoken in Hebrew and Arabic (e.g., Cup Final , [ Gmar Gavia ], and Avanti Popolo ), but not translated into both languages (only to English subtitles). Other texts manifest a total confusion between fiction and reality. The characters deal obsessively with questions of truth and falsity, signifying that in the conflict one cannot determine what has really happened and what is imagined. The obsessive preoccupation with these questions paints a picture in which the characters find it difficult to believe in the reality in which they are involved and to organize it in some rational narrative. Then there comes a moment, as in The Smile of the Lamb , when “the question if something is real or not is no longer important” and “that there is a lie that two believe in, and then it is no longer a lie, but a new kind of a more tolerant truth” (Grossman, 1983, p. 156, 125). The same is seen in Ta’atu’on when “everything is so confusing and complicated. Everything turns out to be the opposite of what you think. What a mess. How can you know what is correct and what is not. What is truth, say, and what is false?” (Ben-Ner, 1989, p. 47). This can also be found in Refuge ( Hasut ) by Michael (1977) when “Fatkhi… has long since learned that his future brother-in-law believed his own lies” (p. 48). Another such example can be given from the movie Time for Cherries ( Onat Haduvdevanim ) in which the story of the conflict goes through three different filters in order to be told: it is seen through the eyes of an international news crew who have come to tell the story of the war. They choose to follow an advertising copywriter who has been mobilized as a military reservist and who confuses himself, the crew, and the audience about the question of what is reality, what is news, and what is an advertisement. Consequently the conflict is seen in these texts as a never-ending event that can be understood as a fairy tale or through undermining the credibility of a particular narrative, but not as reality. While Israeli ethos of conflict and public perception of the time started to see it as a conflict that can be rationally understood and even solved, the texts produced a different narrative. More than anything else, these texts of the 1980s tell a story of not being able to tell a story; a story about a fictional-reality that is too complicated to grasp and understand.