Jewish-Muslim Relations in the Israeli Space in Yehoshua’s Literary Works · 273experience exists in the soul of the people, and they are therefore afraid
to enter the land. This fear of the space, which must be protected and
conquered, does not enable them to maintain a moral existence, because
another people exist in this space.
However, in his essay “Between Right and Right” Yehoshua claims
that the full moral right to conquer part of Israel or any other country by
force is not a historic right but the right of the troubled existence.^11 The
ongoing conflict between the Muslims and the Jews in Israel has created
a feeling of suffocation, creating claustrophobia that motivates the heroes
of his works in space.^12
Yehoshua’s heroes refer to different regions of Israel with an attitude
of closeness, intimacy, and longing on the one hand, and rejection, fear,
and even disgust on the other hand. However, the heroes of his works
are also drawn to the fear and disgust that invade the forbidden places,
yearning to “know them.” His heroes must know the place, as expressed
by the hero in The Liberated Bride who adamantly claims that his job is to
know.^13
The places that serve as a background for Yehoshua’s stories are part
of the mother archetypes—the earth. According to his worldview, the
mother is given by the father—God—to the people, and the son must be
very careful of its honor and sanctity. This situation heightened the fear
of the land because it turned from mother to wife (the father’s wife), and
therefore any careless contact without the father’s permission turns into
incest.^14
This attitude toward the zone pulls the heroes to journeys that include
elements of incest, such as in The Liberated Bride, where incestuous rela-
tions between a father and his daughter take place in a guest house in Je-
rusalem, and the Arab watchman is aware of this and protects the second
daughter from her father. This incest is a symbol of the desecration of the
land.
In his stories, Yehoshua presents figures that deviate from the accepted
Zionist norms: the student in Facing the Forests, who sets fire to a forest, or
Gabriel, who defects from the Israeli Defense Forces, and the daughter of
the car mechanic who finds love in the arms of an Arab car mechanic in
The Lover. These are neurotic and detached figures, who move in a jour-
ney “in air”^15 over archetypical spaces, where the entire space cultivates
a different code of existence.