Arab character's evolve in Israeli drama

The play Chaim(a community play written for Kibbutz Tel Amal), by Menachem Badar (1942), comprises a series of scenes running through the mind of its dying hero who has been shot by an Arab. In the play, the European oppressor, and in particular to the Arab, who objects to ploughing the land at Tel-Shuk. Facing the European oppressor and against the aggressive Arab stands the exemplary figure of Zionism.

Later, from the standpoint of ‘native-born’ playwrights, the‘Arab question’ almost didn’t exist and one could define it as concealed. The only play with an Arab figure – They’ll Arrive Tomorrow – by Natan Shacham (1950), in which an Arab is murdered on stage, was ‘rectified’ in a later version and the presence of the Arab characters was removed.

The sketch ‘Samatocha’ in Levin's The Queen of Bathtub (1970) created a new prototype of Arab character in Israel drama. Samatocha the Arab is a waiter and dishwasher at an Israeli cafe. He is 'smart and obedient and doesn't harm the Jews. The Jews know that Samatocha won't plant any bombs and is not a terrorist, and they are complacent with their own image: they are not primitive types who cannot distinguish between a bomb-planting Arab and a harmless one; and they let him get back to the kitchen to wash the dishes. The dependence upon the Arab, due to his willingness to work at menial jobs, is what saves Samatocha from clashes: 'Don't hurt the Arab, there's a pile of dirty cups in the kitchen' .

The sketch presents for the first time on an Israeli stage the economic exploitation of the Arabs that took place when the restrictions imposed by the military government were lifted and they were able to enter the Israeli labour-market and find employment in jobs at which Israeli Jews were unwilling to work.

The Queen of Bathtub aroused criticism and even controversy, apparently expressing concern over a split in the Jewish-Zionist consensus regarding 'The Arab Question', which had lost its status in Israeli cultural concepts - and in a public theatre.

Towards the end of the 1980s, women playwrights have begun to gain a place in mainstream theatre. Kainy designed a different image for her female characters, she challenged the centrality of the Israeli man in the theatrical narrative, introducing the Arab male as a potent rival to the Jewish-Israeli male (who is portrayed as suffering from impotence). Alona and Ayala, respectively, in Kainy’s plays The Return (1973, 1975) and Like A Bullet in the Head (1981), prefer the Arab to the Jew. The choice of an Arab is not coincidental, but rather a demonstrative act, since the Arab man is seen as the polar opposite of the Jewish-Israeli male on the map of Jewish-Israeli culture.