Habibi, Emile

(1922-96)

   Israeli Arab author and former Israel Communist Party member of Knesset and recipient of the Israel Prize for literature. He was born in Haifa, and from 1941 to 1943, he was cultural affairs reporter and editor of the Arabic section of Broadcasting House in Jerusalem and ran the network's cultural department. He joined the Communist Party in 1943, and when the party split into Jewish and Arab factions in 1945, he helped establish the Arab Communists' League for National Liberation. After Israel's independence, Habibi was one of the founders of the Israel Communist Party, which reunited the Jewish and Arab factions, and represented the party in the Knesset from 1952 to 1972. After leaving the Knesset, he concentrated on writing and editing the Communist Party newspaper Al-Ittihad, which he edited until 1989, when he broke with the Communist Party in the wake of the political changes in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

   Habibi was one of the most popular and well-known authors in the Middle East. He received Israel's highest cultural award, the Israel Prize, in 1992 and the Palestine Liberation Organization's Jerusalem Medal in 1990. He asserted his Arab identity but also advocated Jewish-Arab coexistence and mutual recognition between Israelis and Palestinians. He depicted the predicament of Arabs in Israel caught between Arab identity and Israeli citizenship. His most famous novel, The Opsimist, depicts the combination of optimism and pessimism that characterizes the lives of Israeli Arabs; it has been translated into many languages and staged as a play in both Arabic and Hebrew. Habibi died in Nazareth.