Abstract
Haifa million Palestinian Arabs live in the state of Israel. They have generally received less attention than the 1.2 million Palestinians in the occupied territories — the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights — who have lived under Israeli military rule since 1967. Have these forgotten Palestinians' been successfully integrated into the Israeli state? What problems are encountered by Palestinian writers in Israel?
Two prominent Palestinian writers recently in London discussed these issues with Roger Hardy. One of them, Samih al-Qasim, is a well-known poet, born in 1939, who lives and works in Haifa. The other, Emile Habibi, born in 1921, is a short-story writer and former member of the Israeli parliament, who in 1974 published a remarkable novel, The Pessoptimist, which looks satirically at the life of an Arab in Israel. (A French translation has been published and an English edition is due to appear in the United States.)
Both writers are members of the Israeli Communist Party, whose prestige among Israel's Arabs sometimes puzzles outside observers. In fact, its appeal is less ideological than practical: it is the oldest and best organised non-Zionist party in Israel. Communist publications give many Palestinian writers — communist and non-communist — the chance to appear in print for the first time.