Youssef Sweid, An Arab-Israeli, is caught between the opposing sides of a long-
standing conflict. His play asks the audience to suspend their political views and see the
humanity of all.

The play opens with Sweid — an affable, middle-aged man — showing us various
protest signs that appeared at events he participated in. He stands between a banner
with the words All Eyes on Tel Aviv and one with the words All Eyes on Gaza and
declares “And now please, all eyes on me!”

He is not here to talk about the ongoing war, but about something much more mundane
— his divorce. With charm and a comedic physicality, the actor takes us on a trip down
memory lane: being called a ‘stinky Arab’ in kindergarten, working at a kibbutz where he
picked apples and had kinky sex with a fellow Israeli, and studying theatre in Tel Aviv,
where he made his first Palestinian friend. It is clear that Sweid is a lover and not a
fighter — he has no interest in politics and admits that he, at various points, did not
know who the prime minister of Israel was.

The solo performance is given texture through vivid impersonations of various figures
from Sweid’s life, including his conservative father, Jewish best friend and patriotic
Palestinian teacher.

A darker tone emerges in a scene, where the performer recounts a basketball game
with his friends who were recently enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces. One of them,
Boaz, describes an encounter at a checkpoint: he asked a Palestinian man carrying a
violin case to open it up. When the latter hesitated, Boaz aimed a gun at him.

“He was crying like a baby. So, he opened it up. And actually it was a violin. And Kobi ...
tell him what you did. Kobi said ‘Now play something nice’. And he played this song ‘Ya,
Habibi yalla, yalla, nifrah winul masha Allah!’ I don’t understand why they make it so
hard on you, those fucking Palestinians.“

Sweid is offended and wants to scream ‘I am a fucking Palestinian!’. But condemnation
of the treatment received by the man at the border — and by countless Palestinians
every day — doesn’t make it into his monologue.

In a later scene describing a phone call with his friend in Israel after the attacks of
October 7th, it is revealed that the latter’s mother was almost burned alive. Youssef is
horrified but, again, refrains from moral posturing.

This absence of a political stance may feel evasive and leave some with a sense of
dissatisfaction, but that sentiment would miss the point of the play. Youssef Sweid is not
here to lecture; he is simply presenting his life story as a man who is a ‘hybrid’ —
somebody who belongs to both Israel and Palestine and recognizes the two narratives.
The River and the Sea offers the possibility of a third narrative — one where there is
space for everyone’s pain.