Introduction to Israeli-Palestinian Literature and Postcolonial Studies

R

ula Jebreal’s 2003 novel

Miral

dramatizes the many facets of how desire has come to be structured in the Israeli-Palestinian contact zones—how the personal has begun to strike back at the political, which, in this particular geopolitical milieu, has so uniquely inserted itself into it. Jebreal’s narrator recalls a libidinous vista at the checkpoint:

She got out of the car and approached a soldier who was leaning against a jeep. He was around twenty, with black hair, dark brown eyes, slightly olive skin, and fleshy lips. He could have been an Arab. He smelled strongly of cologne, and he looked her over, head to toe, hesitating here and there along the way, attracted by the charms that were beginning to bloom in her young body. Finally, he lit a cigarette and said, “If you give me a kiss, I’ll let you pass.” (155)