Waiting for Uri Davis in a hotel forecourt in Ramallah, I reflect that his reputation precedes him by a comfortable distance. His rejection of political Zionism, coupled with his conversion to Islam and his recent election to Fatah's Revolutionary Council means he is treated with a mixture of scorn and hostility by vast swaths of Israelis and supporters of Israel in the Jewish diaspora. Yet when he finally pulls up in his bright yellow VW Beetle with matching alloy wheels, the image he gives off is light years away from his detractors' portrayal of him as a Qur'an-bashing, fire-breathing radical.
My first impression is of a man of the same mould as thousands of other progressives who cut their teeth in the shifting political sands of the 60s and 70s, eschewing the overarching conservatism and hawkishness of their leaders and seeking to forge a more tolerant future for the next generation to inherit. From the moment we begin talking, there is little to suggest that his agenda is motivated by anything other than trying to achieve peaceful coexistence and mutual recognition between the two warring parties in the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Granted, the means he wishes to employ to bring about the change are not those with which I concur – namely boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel ("[the situation needs] a stick and not just a carrot", he maintains) – but the end he promotes is entirely palatable and plausible. He believes that Israel should remain a Jewish state, "but within the framework of UN resolutions". This means that Israel "basically should be a binational state with some Jewish decorations: the Sabbath on the seventh day, road signs [in Hebrew], that kind of thing", with the Arab state alongside it sporting a "mirror constitution".
"Jerusalem is not the capital under UN resolutions," he points out, explaining that it should be enshrined as an international city in line with the original partition plan. "We should oppose the political Zionist interpretation of the Jewish state".
Davis's decades of activism in the arena of Palestinian solidarity have, unsurprisingly, earned him opprobrium amongst adherents of both political and religious Zionism; their reactions range from scathing condemnation of his work and ideology in the press to "ugly letters and death threats". He has little contact with those on the other end of the political spectrum: "On the rare occasions that I do have a chance of reasonable discussion [with them], it is when I pick up hitchhikers – I don't discriminate on the basis of dress." He says these dialogues "very quickly boil down to the basis of Zionist claims to settlements in Palestine – which are almost invariably [rooted in the] Old Testament. I say that the Old Testament is not a land registry document, and at that point the conversation stops."
Despite acknowledging that at present he struggles to make headway with those for whom religion trumps reason in the conflict, he is sanguine about the chances of bringing about real change in the future. He draws heavily on the success of the anti-apartheid campaign when discussing ways to fight the powers-that-be in Israel, pointing out that while "Mandela was demonised for decades, he was released in 1990 and only four years later he won the presidential election – and even beat De Klerk in white constituencies. It only took four years to dismantle [the apartheid mindset]".
He draws another comparison between South Africa and Israel in the way religion has been hijacked by the nationalists and tacked on to their cause. "Whites were taught that if you were pro-Christ, you should be pro-apartheid; if you were anti-apartheid, you were anti-Christ and therefore pro-devil. It's the same with [those who say] to be pro-Jewish you must be pro-Israel".
We discuss the importance of religion in terms of regional politics and his vision for the future of the conflict. "Religion and state must be separate", he states firmly. I tell him that he and I have met before, albeit when I was only six and Davis attended the Passover Seder at my grandparents' house. He relates a story about his Passover experience in 2005, which he spent with a friend in Tamra: "she cooked, I brought the ritual plate and the Hagada".
"When I started reading [from it], I realised that the religious cliche that 'in all religious texts there are beautiful and ugly parts and we should celebrate the beautiful parts' was not the case here. All of the Hagada story is ugly, ethnocentric, and celebrates collective punishment. There is only one exception in the text, and even that ends with [the phrase] 'Next Year in Jerusalem'. I decided to rewrite the Hagada – it took me five years to do, in which I kept the original skin of the text minus the ugly parts and minus God."
He incorporated plates from Jewish artist Ricky Romain, named the resulting manuscript "A Secular Anti-Zionist Companion for the Passover Hagada", and is now seeking a publisher to bring his work to Passover tables around the world. "I am qualified to do this with reference to Jewish texts, but not to other fundamentalist texts," he notes. Likewise, when it comes to commenting on the psyche of those responsible for perpetuating the decades-old occupation of Palestinian land and keeping the fires of political Zionism burning brightly, he is more than eligible to pass comment, having spent most of his life living in Israel since before the state was even established.
He is adamant that more Jews should join Fatah, in the same way that whites joined the ANC during the darkest days of apartheid; to him, ideas of religious loyalty should come a distant second to pursuing justice and equality. As he drives off again into the rapidly darkening night, it is clear that he at least is living out his vision of breaking down ethnic divisions and working towards a future of coexistence and tolerance between the two sides. But the task ahead of him is a daunting one, and how many others he can convince to follow in the wake of him and his yellow Beetle down the streets of Ramallah remains to be seen.
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