Reading Freyre in the Holy Land

Since the dissolution of the British Mandate and the subsequent formation of a Jewish state, Palestinian and Israeli writers have faced slander, exile, jail, and even bodily danger for their liberal poetics. Just a few canonical names that comprise the flowering body of Occupation-era peace literature are Israeli national poet Yehuda Amichai, famous Israeli novelist Amos Oz, Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish, and Arab Christian novelist Anton Shammas. Since the 1980s, scholars have examined the way these writers, through sensitive and compelling prose and poetry, have taken considerable political risks to intervene into Israeli politics and militaristic nationalism. Literary critics have not, however, sustained an analysis of a crucial theme persisting in these works that constitutes a central part of their liberal poetics: the interethnic romance and intimacy between Arabs and Jews.