A family sleeping on a wire: In 1948 someone drew a line through a Palestinian village. David Grossman breached it

THEY gathered together: seven members of the Kabha family. All live in the village of Barta'a. Four in Israeli Barta'a and three in the eastern half of the village, in the intifada.

The Kabha family line twists and stretches back to the 18th century, chronicled as a testimony and memorial on parchment. The clan has lived in its village for many years, far from the main road. They married each other and worked their lands until, one day in 1948, on the Greek island of Rhodes, during one of the meetings of the committees that drafted the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Jordan, someone traced a green line through the valley between the two parts of the village. With a sweep of his hand he sundered families, ties of friendship, land, a fabric of life. The whole, complete village turned into two incomplete ones, and the two amputees faced their separate fates.

For 18 years they longed for each other. Israeli and Jordanian soldiers prevented free passage of civilians, and afterwards, when incidents between the armies became more frequent, a border fence was erected in the wadi. Despite this, the separation was not complete. Smugglers crossed the frontier and passed on news and greetings; family celebrations were held on a hill overlooking the other side. A narrow canal was built to bring water from the spring, which remained on the Israeli side, to the centre of Jordanian Barta'a, and the women in Israel launched paper boats down the canal with cargoes of letters to their friends. The people would shout the family 'bulletin board' to each other over the hills - who had been born, who had died. Mostly they would watch each other curiously, as if they were looking in an enchanted mirror with a life of its own that could show them themselves and their other, possible, fate.

In the Six-Day War the green line was punctured. The two halves of the whole tottered toward each other, met in the wadi, clove to each other for several hours, and then each individual returned to his village, bewildered.

I wanted to organise a meeting of the two Barta'as. The two halves of the village were not excited about getting together. Yet after delays and evasions, the meeting took place. The Israelis waited for me at Sufian Kabha's house. A house of magnificent beauty, 'the lifework of father, my two brothers, and me'. Actually, many houses on this side of the village look like the projects of a lifetime - huge, rounded, like small seacraft on pillars. The yards are well cared for, containing olive and pomegranate and all kinds of fruit trees. Facing them is eastern Barta'a, poorer to the eye, austere, as if it were stuck to the hill, its unpaved roads kicking up dust and its walls stitched with slogans.

'What did we, the Israelis, experience during the intifada?' said Rafat Kabha, 29, a teacher at an Arab school in Jaffa. 'The truth is that on this side we didn't experience anything special. Except for the expansion of our national consciousness. Most of the people here, especially most of the young people, know now that there is a nation. That they belong to that nation, which is struggling for its freedom.'

'So now you feel more Palestinian than you did five years ago?'

'Well, before the intifada I was hesitant about saying out loud that I'm Palestinian. Now I say it openly. Before, if anyone asked me, I would say that I was, you know, an Israeli Arab. Now I'm proud of being Palestinian, because it does not contradict my citizenship, nor Israeli law.'

'And how are relations between the two parts of the village now?'

Nasuh Abd Elkader Kabha, 33 years old: 'Relations are very good]' He clamped his lips shut. He hadn't made a statement but a declaration, one of those declarations that challenge something hanging in the air. He, Nasuh Kabha, was declaring himself spokesman for the cause. 'We've always been one family] After all, my uncles live there] Relations have gotten even closer since the intifada] I really don't know why you're asking.'

'Because it seems to me,' I said, 'that four years ago (when I had tried unsuccessfully to arrange a meeting between the two sides) no one was speaking so warmly of each other. Neither here nor there.'

'No, no. One family]'

'Before the intifada you were one family, too.'

'Now the relations have more - what shall I say? - political significance,' Rafat interrupted defiantly.' You could say that just as the political situation once pulled us apart, the situation now brings us together. For instance, before the intifada, a man would be careful about giving his daughter to someone from eastern Barta'a. Now, even though we know that their future is perhaps uncertain, and it is impossible to know what will happen with them, we don't hesitate, because they have pride there.'

'And what do you feel when your relatives pay such a high price and you remain passive?'

'We're not passive,' Rafat explained temperately. 'We give them humanitarian aid and financial aid. We live in Israel, and I'm more or less pleased that I live here. At least I've got some kind of definition; I live within certain borders, in a certain country. And that country has laws. Nothing to be done about it.'

'I wasn't asking about your formal status. Your cousin is cooped up by a curfew, and you aren't. How does that affect your life?'

'I feel tension, that's clear. Hatred, too. That is,' he quickly adds, 'localised hatred, hatred only at that particular time. Listen, today, for instance, something happened on their side. It hurt me so much I couldn't eat. You can't have an appetite when you see them peeking out of their windows to see whether there's a soldier near the house. And there were days when the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) went in there and imposed a curfew, and the soldiers walked the streets, and we here were all on our roofs, watching. You see the soldiers going into your aunt's house - my two sisters live there - breaking lamps, closets. I could see a soldier shooting at the loudspeaker in the mosque . . . and when the army goes in there, the feeling of connection actually becomes stronger, all your blood rushes to your head. But I know that I'm subject to the law, and there's nothing we can do.'

Nasuh: 'The intifada showed me the true face of the Jews. Things I only heard at a distance, and suddenly it was close to me personally. How they go into a house and break things, for the hell of it, and curse, and they include the people from west Barta'a in their curses: dirty Arabs; Arabs, go fuck yourselves - in front of our children, and they even say it in Arabic, to be sure that everyone understands. But what can I do, except help out with money, with food? I'm not willing to give real physical help. I live under the laws of the state of Israel. It hurts me. Listen, on one side are the laws of the country, and on the other the laws of blood]' He falls silent, and suddenly erupts before me again: 'But what can I do?] Only envy them, that they are fighting for freedom, and be silent, and tie my own hands, and be furious with myself and silence my inner voice . . .'

Nasuh Kabha is a nature teacher. He studied at a teachers' college in Haifa. He has five children. Gaunt and sinewy, he speaks bitterly and very quietly. 'I belong to the state of Israel only in the geographical sense. According to an agreement they imposed on me. I am an employee of the Ministry of Education. Receive a salary. Live here. But in the spirit, in the soul, I belong to the Palestinian people. So you tell me how I can educate children in these circumstances. A simple example - I've run into a lot of pupils here who draw, let's say, a Palestinian flag. Now, I've got to tell the pupil that this is forbidden. But the pupil will consider me a traitor. And maybe I'll also feel that I'm a traitor. But if I show any approval of his picture, maybe they'll fire me, or summon me for an investigation. So what do I do? I don't tell him anything. I pretend that I don't notice.

'How is it possible in such a situation to teach young people values, honesty, courage?'

But then the conversation was cut short. Three young men from eastern Barta'a strode into the room. 'Strode' is the wrong word; they swaggered. Three men of 20 or more, apparently from among the intifada leaders in eastern Barta'a. You could sense how a very slight timidity had suddenly settled over the Arabs from the Israeli side.

The three easterners interrogated me for a few minutes, their eyes trained on me expressionlessly. In the end they consented to talk, calling themselves by false names. It was quite evident which was the highest-ranking. I will call him A. First I asked about the changes that had occurred in eastern Barta'a since the outbreak of the intifada.

A: 'Sure, of course there have been changes. Our solidarity and co-operation have developed considerably. And there is also organised resistance to the army. There are youth groups responsible for organising the struggle against the army. How to defend the village when the army attacks by day, how to defend it at night. Obviously, because of our struggle, we have economic difficulties and social problems, and the organisations work to solve all these problems, and work for solidarity, and they also assist poor and hungry families.'

He reached the end of what sounded like a fixed recitation. Afterwards he pointed a finger at me. 'Write: The '48 are part of us. We share ties of blood and Palestinian identity. The intifada did not create this link. It only exposed it to some of the people. Most of the people of the '48 had discovered it long before.'

I looked at the '48 - those Palestinians who came under Israeli rule after Israel won its independence in 1948 - complex people, unravelled people, already tied to Israeli existence by many branching filaments, some of pain, some of hope. Every time during the conversation that one of the easterners threw out the term '48', you could feel something in them twitching for an instant in discomfort.

I turned to them and recalled the harsh things I had heard about them during my previous visit here, from their relatives in eastern Barta'a.

'I know the people who told you that,' Sufian Kabha responded. 'I don't think that whoever said that to you has more national pride than I do. I only know that I've gotten over the whole dilemma of my identity as a Palestinian in Israel. You can't say I'm 'dormant'. On the contrary, I've invested thought in it, perhaps no less than he has. I had to explain to myself circumstances more complicated than his - how to live in an Israeli state and also fight for my people. I've learnt to fit my Israeli citizenship and Palestinian identity together, and it is now a single identity, only more complex.'

'Maybe it's possible to say,' I asked the Israeli citizens, 'that in your case, over the last 40 years your thinking patterns and even national character have developed differently from those of the Palestinians in the territories?'

Rafat laughs. 'The difference between us and them is mostly that we're under more pressure than they are . . . making a living, loans from the banks, our responsibilities, our overdrafts.'

A taunts him, intentionally switching to Hebrew: 'You've taken out a mortgage, eh?'

'I don't think that a different national character has been created among us,' responds Sufian Kabha, soft-featured, slightly stooped, as if overburdened by troubles. 'What happened to us is that, until '67 we were isolated from the sources of the nation, both geographically and culturally, and that delayed the development of our Palestinian national identity. And if you ask why there was no violent resistance to the regime among us, as there is with them, I think that it's because the PLO conceded the Israeli Arabs. It always demanded that the Arabs in Israel, as part of the Jewish state, conduct a purely political struggle. It did not ask them to make an intifada in Israel. The Israeli Arabs accepted this, because they saw it was in their own best interests.'

'And you don't feel that they in fact betrayed you? Gave you up to the Israelis?'

'They did not betray us. If a Palestinian state is established, I'll feel that it is being established for my brother in the other Barta'a. If Arafat says that I'm part of Israel, I accept that just as I have to obey the head of an Arab family, as if Father divided his land between his sons. I accept that, even if my brother's portion is better.'

The Arabs of '48, A said, did not belong to the framework of the intifada. Did the people of the other Barta'a expect that their relatives in the Israeli Barta'a would behave differently, or provide a different kind of support?

'I don't think about what he does or doesn't do for me]' A fumed. 'When you're under curfew, when the army surrounds you and knocks on the door, do you have time to think about someone else? I save all my thinking power for resisting the occupation] To keep going]'

'But you still made attempts to drag them into the violent struggle.'

A calmed himself down and thawed out a smile. 'That was only for propaganda purposes. We knew that if we did something in eastern Barta'a, no one would pay any attention to us, because we're far off the road. But if we were to do it in the Israeli Barta'a, everyone would come. Newspapers and television. It was just a ploy. Tactics.'

This is an extract from 'Sleeping on a Wire - Conversations with Palestinians in Israel', by David Grossman, published by Jonathan Cape at pounds 17.99.

(Photographs omitted)