The Optimist: A Social Biography of Tawfiq Zayyad

262 Pages·2020·3.078 MB·English

by  Tamir Sorek

THE OPTIMIST
Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern
and Islamic Societies and Cultures
THE OPTIMIST
A Social Biography of Tawfiq Zayyad
Tamir Sorek
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written
permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sorek, Tamir, author.
Title: The optimist : a social biography of Tawfiq Zayyad / Tamir Sorek.
Other titles: Stanford studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic societies and
cultures.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2020. |
Series: Stanford studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic societies and
cultures | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020008448 (print) | LCCN 2020008449 (ebook) | ISBN
9780804797474 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503612730 (paperback) | ISBN
9781503612747 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Zayyad, Tawfiq. | Politicians—Palestine—Biography. |
Nationalists—Palestine—Biography. | Poets, Palestinian
Arab—Biography. | Arab-Israeli conflict—History—20th century. |
Palestine—Politics and government—1948–
Classification: LCC DS126.6.Z39 S67 2020 (print) | LCC DS126.6.Z39
(ebook) | DDC 320.54095694092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008448
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008449
Cover photo: Tawfiq Zayyad on the Knesset Podium
Cover design: Rob Ehle
Contents
PROLOGUE 1
1 COMMUNISM AND ANTICOLONIALISM 11
2 STEADFASTNESS 28
3 BADGES OF MODERNITY 49
4 IN THE CROSSFIRE 65
5 MUNICIPAL STRUGGLES 86
6 NATIONAL LEADERSHIP 106
7 CHILDREN IN THE BATTLEFIELD 126
8 A SECULAR HOLY WARRIOR 144
9 A SPOKE IN THE WHEEL OF HISTORY 158
vi contents
10 OSLO: THE SKY IS THE LIMIT 173
EPILOGUE 191
Acknowledgments 197
Notes 199
Bibliography 235
Index 245
PROLOGUE
In 1954, Palestinians who remained under Israeli rule were
still recovering from the collective shock of the Nakba (catastrophe): the expulsion
of approximately 750,000 Palestinians from the territory that became Israel in
1948 and the destruction of hundreds of villages and most of the Palestinian urban
centers. Soon the status of those who remained violently changed from being part
of a self-confident majority to a minority living under antagonistic military rule.
People lost contact with their expelled family members, and the new rulers were
treating them as unwanted intruders in their own homeland while drastically
changing the landscape in front of their eyes. Many lost their land and were trying
to adjust to their new social status. The new economy was structurally biased
against them. Poverty and unemployment were common, and the future seemed
uncertain. That same year, a young Palestinian communist activist published in
his party literary bulletin’s al-Jadid a poem directly addressing these sentiments
of colonial victimization and economic discrimination. His poem ended with a
utopian revolutionary vision:
The years have taught us
That you want to change our land into tombs
And dance over its ruins.
But your wishes will not be fulfilled.
And the war monster
1
2 Prologue
Will be crushed by the toilers’ fist,
And the Peoples1 will build a permanent peace, forever.
We would then get rid of our burdens,
And live for our children.
Songs would fill the horizon,
And the mothers’ hearts would find peace.2
This anticolonial Marxist rhetoric was compatible with the editorial line of
al-Jadid and reflected the important role intellectuals affiliated with the Is-
raeli Communist Party (ICP) played in articulating a vocabulary of resistance
in those years.3 The optimistic fervor, though, was a trademark of the author of
these lines, Tawfiq Zayyad, who would go on to play an important role in the
struggle of the Palestinian citizens of Israel over four decades as a leader in the
ICP, an admired poet, the mayor of Nazareth, and a member of the Knesset.
Above all, Zayyad was a producer of hope: hope for justice for Palestinians, hope
for a Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation, and hope for the creation of an egalitari-
an society based on human dignity and without exploitation. As naively quaint
and uncritical the idea of hope might sound today, it was a fundamental aspect
of Zayyad’s intellectual and political endeavor.
Zayyad’s hope was deeply embedded in his Marxist conviction, which in turn
maintained a strong link to his struggle for Palestinian rights. His political con-
sciousness and socialization as a communist took shape within the context of
the Palestinian struggle against British rule and Zionism through the 1930s and
1940s. After the 1948 war and the expulsion of most of the Palestinians who lived
in the territory that became the State of Israel, Zayyad became a member of a
colonized ethnonational minority struggling for survival. Israeli citizenship was
imposed on him, but his party, the ICP, immediately turned this citizenship into a
tool in this struggle, challenging the authorities through parliamentary, judicial,
municipal, and cultural channels.
Zayyad is the oldest of a generation of major Palestinian poets (Taha Muham-
mad ‘Ali, Samih al-Qasim, Mahmoud Darwish, Salim Jubran, Rashid Husayn) who
reached adulthood in the early years of the State of Israel. Through their poetry,
they played an important role in producing and disseminating political ideas and
meanings. They came from working-class backgrounds and were deeply invested
in improving the lives of the working class and peasants. In the words of the Italian
leader and theorist Antonio Gramsci, they were “organic intellectuals.”4
Prologue 3
These poet activists continued a tradition of political poetry with a left-leaning
orientation that flourished before 1948, but following the Nakba, the range of
potential formal political affiliations available to them was extremely narrow.
Due to their anticolonial consciousness,5 most of them rejected being part of a
Zionist political party,6 yet most forms of politics based on Palestinian solidarity
or Arab nationalism were illegal. In the 1950s, the only non-Zionist party that
actively and consistently confronted the colonial policy of the Israeli state locally
and internationally was the ICP. In addition, the party provided some of the few
opportunities for the publication of Arab literature and poetry. As a result, most
of the leading poets of this generation were affiliated with the ICP.
As political activists and as poets, Zayyad’s generation took part in shaping
Palestinian national identity. For Palestinians in Israel living under the military
government, which was in effect until 1966, poetry became a major avenue for
political expression and mobilization.7 Yet poetry and parliamentary politics
remained divided in the particular and somewhat extreme circumstances of
Palestinian politics in Israel.8 In her discussion of Arab Palestinian members of
the ICP under the military government, Palestinian sociologist Honaida Ghanem
distinguished between the politicians and the intellectuals, who were usually
poets. Politicians worked to achieve equal rights for Arab citizens and integrate
them into the state apparatus, and therefore they worked within the boundaries
of Israel citizenship. Poets called for a more radical national liberation and pre-
sented the state as a colonialist oppressive creation, a temporary deviation from
justice.9 This poetry was embedded in and even shaped the Arab and Palestinian
national discourse. The ICP had to navigate carefully between the conflicting
goals of Israeli politics and Palestinian poetry.
In this context, Zayyad is a particularly interesting figure. No other poet of
his generation became so intensively involved in politics or developed such a long
and successful political career as he did. Moreover, as his political commitments
grew, politics took priority over his dedication to poetry. During the eighteen
years he served as a member of the Knesset, he wrote no poetry. He explained
that he lacked the time for writing, but it is also likely that being a member of the
Israeli parliament required a state of mind that was incompatible with crafting
revolutionary poetry.
Zayyad rose to fame as a revolutionary poet during the heyday of secularism
in the Arab world, and many considered the poetry of his generation an emblem
of this secularism. To be sure, religion and secularism are flexible categories, and