Summary
Palestinian writer resident in Haifa, a Knesset member for over twenty years and one of the leading Palestinian voices inside Israel, whose epistolary novel Said sets beside Ghassan Kanafani’s work as the other first-rate Palestinian fiction.
Details
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Habibi is a resident of Haifa, was a Knesset member for over twenty years, and is one of the leading Palestinian voices inside Israel (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.174 / printed p.153).
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His epistolary novel, whose Arabic title Said gives in a form garbled in the text copy, is unique in Arabic literature in that it is consistently ironic, exploiting a marvelously controlled energetic style to depict the peculiarly outstanding and invisible condition of Palestinians inside Israel (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.174 / printed p.153).
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Along with Kanafani’s work, Habibi’s sketches the complete picture of Palestinian identity as no purely political tract can; both writers record the Kafkaesque alternation between being and not-being there for Palestinians, whether inside Israel or in the Arab world (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.174 / printed p.153).
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In Manna, Habibi’s 1974 satirical novel Al-Mutasha’il [The Pessoptimist] exposes what had been concealed about the Palestinians remaining in Haifa and the Galilee under military rule; Habibi admitted on the eve of his death that parts were autobiographical, including the road of his return from Lebanon to Haifa (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.36-37).
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Manna reads the novel as an admission, behind the satirical mask, that Habibi and many Remainers were searching for a way to stay at any price: its protagonist Sa‘id Abi al-Nahs demonstrates total loyalty to Israel and receives payments and rewards for his cooperation, yet never rises to the level of the average Israeli citizen under the iron grip of military rule (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.37).
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In Manna’s Chapter 3 (part 4), Habibi, with Fu’ad Nassar and Tawfiq Tubi, led the League’s pro-partition camp, went to the Belgrade Cominform conference, and travelled on with Shmuel Mikunis to Prague, claiming he knew nothing of the Czech arms deal and winning a libel suit over the accusation (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.126, 128).
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Habibi spent about six months in Beirut after Prague, meeting Arab communist parties, while Emile Tuma was arrested on arrival in Lebanon (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.136).
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At the October 1948 unity conference Habibi spoke for the League and ‘the secret popular resistance movement against the armies of occupation’ — meaning the Jordanian and Egyptian armies, not Israel’s (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.141-142).
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Habibi came to al-Tira in the The Triangle after the 31 July 1953 search operation to express support for the villagers and examine the damage caused by the army (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.213).
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Chapter 7’s remainder (part 8): the interior ministry tried to strike Habibi from Haifa’s voter roll in June 1951 as an illegal entrant; his appeal, argued by Hanna Naqqara, showed identity card no. 46386 of 16 January 1949, and the appeals court seated him in the second Knesset (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.273).
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His mother, despairing of her refugee children’s return, surrendered her Israeli nationality in 1954 and left Haifa through the Mandelbaum Gate for Jerusalem; Habibi accompanied her and later wrote the short story “The Mandelbaum Gate” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.284).
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After the Kafr Kassim massacre Habibi moved his family from Haifa to Nazareth in 1956; the Shabak then accused him of calling for an Algerian-style rebellion, a charge Yair Bäuml concluded was fabricated to incriminate Maki’s Arab leaders as the party’s discourse turned nationalist (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.284, 294).
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At Kafr Kana he voiced the mid-1950s optimism: “The dismissal of Glubb Pasha, then the nationalization of the Suez Canal, and then the settlement of the Israeli-Arab conflict, are links in the chain of getting rid of colonial domination.” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.287).