The West Bank Story: An Israeli Arab's View of Both Sides of a Tangled Conflict

By Rafic Halabi. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982304 pp. $12.95

Reviewed by Perry Ketchum

"I stand on my right as an Israeli to warn my own countrymen, in no uncertain terms, that a broad segment of the population is misreading the state of affairs in the territories and leading us deeper into a morass that can only be to our continuing detriment," writes Rafik Halabi, a reporter for Israel Television, in The West Bank Story.

"The Palestinian people," he continues, "are coming together in the shadow of Israel and in response to Israel's efforts to snuff out their spirit. The same was true of the people of Israel when they faced down the British in the 1940s—so we really should know better. The harder the blows, the more they signal desperation, and the Palestinians are confident that time is on their side."

If Halabi's message is unwelcome to the Begin government and its supporters, his book should certainly infuriate the Palestine Liberation Organization, as well—an organization which he characterizes as "terrorists." Nor would many Arabs appreciate the opening line of the book: "I am an Israeli patriot, though I am not a Jew."

Unique Credentials

In short, there is plenty to anger both sides in The West Bank Story. That does not disturb Halabi, however, who presents himself as an observer with unique credentials.

Halabi was born in one of the 18 Arab Druse villages in Israel. There is considerable ambivalence in the life of an Israeli Druse, according to Halabi. As a tiny minority, the group's strategy for survival has traditionally been one of flexibility. Although the Druse fought side by side with the Israeli forces in the 1967 war, the experience left many Druse frustrated—the soldiers, for example, who returned home to their village of Sajour to spend evenings by the light of kerosene lamps while in a neighboring Israeli village even the chicken coops were electrified. "Is it any wonder the Druse have felt deprived and frustrated?" asks Halabi.

The Druse study in Israeli schools, but Halabi recalls that "of the history of the Druse and their heroes I was never taught a thing in school." Halabi went on to become the first Druse of his village to receive a higher education (a master's degree from Hebrew University). On graduation, he reported for duty in the armed services, where he became an officer.

In 1974, he went to work for Israel Television, which was looking for an Arabic-speaking reporter to cover the occupied territories. Here the ambivalence of his identity became most painful. "When I began to tell what my eyes had seen and my camera captured in the occupied territories, suddenly there were voices calling my 'Israelness' into question."

Halabi traces the growing tension and violence on the West Bank from the 1960's to the present day. It is a tension which he blames in good part on the attitude of key Israeli officials—a philosophy "which continues to be a cornerstone of Israeli policy in the occupied territories ... that the most effective way to ensure continued Israeli control over captured areas that the government had no intention of forfeiting was to establish what we here call 'facts on the ground'—faits accomplis." Halabi points to Israeli actions shortly after the 1967 war, with "the residents of the eastern half of Jerusalem—in a state of shock and dread." The Israeli government demolished that part of the Arab Quarter of the Old City which adjoins the Western Wall (the Wailing Wall) and then proclaimed the application of Israeli law, jurisdiction, and administration in Arab Jerusalem.

Escalation of Violence

Such actions precipitated an escalating and continuing round of violence, and what Halabi calls the traditional and moderate Palestinians among them educators, religious leaders, and merchants—soon joined the ranks of resistance to Israeli authority. As violence escalated, Halabi writes, "we (Israelis) closed our ears to it and perhaps out of desperation, abused our power by wielding it with force."

The book includes extensive descriptions of the continuing furor caused by Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Halabi cites Hebron, where the government continually accommodated the settlers, building them a housing project and compromising when they broke the law—leading observers to the inescapable conclusion that "sheer obstinacy wins out in the end."

In other chapters, Halabi describes the development of the Palestine Liberation Organization and of Gush Emunim—the faction founded in 1973 which turned Israel's 'National Religious Party into a champion of massive settlement effort throughout the occupied territories.

The West Bank that Halabi sees is a place where competing sides have been driven to extremes, where voices of moderation have ceased to be heard. This is an interesting book, and the rarity of Halabi's credentials—as an Israeli citizen who has been in a position to watch the creeping Israeli annexation of the territory at first hand—is what gives the book its strength.

Perry Ketchum is a partner in The Transnational Group, a public relations firm in Washington. D.C.