ABSTRACT
Ever since the beginning of the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel in the 1880s, books, poems, plays and articles have been written about the Arabs who were already dwelling in the land when the Jewish settlers arrived. Few Hebrew writers and poets have not dedicated at least some of their work to a description of the Arab, his lifestyle or his encounters with Jews. Naturally, some of the Hebrew literature that dealt with Arabs was highly self-conscious of the encounter with an alien whom history and upheavals in the Jewish fate had caused to be present at a time and place when circumstances brought the Jews back to their homeland.1
