The Desert Away from Home: Amos Oz’s Memoir, Levinasian Ethics, and Binaries of Pain in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

This essay describes Amos Oz’s encounter in the desert with a Bedouin woman in his Tale of Love and Darkness (2004). The encounter transforms the politics of the land by reminding readers that a Jewish home is also homelessness and the desert is a nomadic space that represents both home and exile. The desert allows Oz to transform a Joshua-like conquest story to a place where Levinas’ responsibility toward the ger, the stranger, presides. The term “binary of pain” acts to highlight Zionism’s potential, inherent in its Jewish roots, for encountering the Palestinian rather than enacting the language of war. I argue that Levinasian ethics, which stress responsibility for the Other, offer a tactics of encounter, creating a space for smaller gestures which can beget resolutions.