Michael Bernet

EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOK:
In the summer of 1967, the lives of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs intermingled, their fates and interests became intertwined. It was a time of optimism and hope for all, a beginning to a harmony that would last for all time. The Israelis fully believed that an offer of peace was only a phone call away; the only uncertainty was whether President Nasser of Egypt or King Hussein of Jordan would be the first to negotiate.

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Down in the belly of his Sherman, Salomon Hamou was pressing his tank in the painfully slow advance up the slope to Sheikh Abdul Assiz. One Sherman wormed its way up the slope, tottering from one track to the other over the giant boulders. Then, inevitably it came, a blinding flash, a thunderous explosion, the tank blown up with fifteen pounds of TNT. A second Sherman touched off a mine as it drew abreast to the left of the disabled one. The third tank got a few yards closer to the crest, then touched off a mine that lifted the heavy monster high into the air. A fourth tank continued uphill without further incident. Behind the tank followed other tanks and behind these the open half-tracks now made their way.

The driver of the third tank was twenty-five-year-old Salomon Hamou, cabinetmaker from Yavneh.

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Twice during Monday evening Ziad Hashimeh left his apartment in Arab Jerusalem, to bring food and reassurance to his mother sheltering in the ground-floor apartment of a neighboring house. When shelling around their house became particularly intense, Ziad and his father Amin, crawled under the beds; when it slackened they lay down on the unmade beds and waited. At three in the morning the shelling tapered off and Ziad watched from the window. Israeli soldiers were fighting their way uphill against the Arab positions. Now they were right in the garden. “We’ll be killed now,” Ziad said to his father. He lay down on the bed, waiting for the inevitable. The soldiers, about ten of them, were on the balcony, directly outside the window. One or two looked through the open window, saw the forms of the Hashimehs on their beds, then went on past the back door without uttering a word.

On Tuesday afternoon, Ziad hung out a large white flag from every window.

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Kohava Zion stood by the entrance to the casualty station, enjoying the cool serenity of early morning in Jerusalem. More people were in the streets now, unhurried, walking normally about their daily errands.

“Hey, look who’s here!” Kohava called out. It was Mazal Arush, an old friend.

“It’s Kohava!” Mazal called back in surprise. “What are you doing in Jerusalem?” They exchanged light banter for a few minutes.

“I must be off now,” Mazal said finally. “I’ve got a job in an office. I should have been there at eight.”

Kohava burst out laughing. “We’re in the middle of a war and that’s your only worry.” Mazal, walking away, laughed too. An exploding shell tore into the scene. Mazal started running. Another shell whistled down. The third shell shattered her chest. Kohava buried her face in her hands. An officer asked for Mazal’s address and left to inform her parents. “She was my friend,” Kohava said. “I want to go with you.” The officer waited, but Kohava made no motion to go and he went on alone.

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Throughout the battle for Jerusalem, Rabbi Mordecai Ben-Eliahu was at his post, advisor on the religious precepts associated with burial of the dead. As he passed by the front-line positions, he answered many questions. One, above all, was asked repeatedly: is it permissible for a Jew to enter the Haram es-Sharif in the course of the fighting, despite the rabbinical injunction that none may tread on the site where the Temple of Solomon had once stood? There was no hesitation. “In time of war a Jew may enter even the site of the Holy of Holies.” The question that prompted his answer gave him joy. If Jews battle on the Temple Mount, their only aim could be the recapture of the Western Wall, the last relic of the Temple that had been destroyed by the Romans 1,897 years earlier.

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Mahmud Barakat and his family left their apartment in Bet Hanania as soon as the shooting started in Jerusalem--with folding cots, chairs, a kerosene cooking stove, and a few belongings--for a safer ground-floor apartment that stood empty. Barakat is one of Arab Jerusalem’s more prosperous merchants, with a flourishing store on Sultan Suleiman Street for dress and upholstery materials. His eldest son, Walid, a medical student in Vienna, had come home to Bet Hanania the day his fourth-year examinations were over; it had seemed, even in Vienna, that war was only days away. As the shooting came nearer that night, the women lay on their cots, terrified. Walid tried to calm them, telling them that all would be well soon, but inwardly he cursed the Jordanian army and he cursed King Hussein for not arming the populace. Shells from tanks and mortars fell among the houses; machine guns were adding their chatter to the din. At seven thirty, a group of disheveled soldiers burst into the ground-floor apartment. “They’re Iraqis,” Walid explained to his anxious mother in the inner room. “They’ve come to help us fight the enemy.” He returned to the front room to face the Israeli soldiers.

They stood there, awkwardly, apparently unsure what to do next.

“We’re all civilians,” Walid assured them in English. “None of us has arms.”

“Do you have any coffee?” one of the soldiers asked hesitantly.

Two soldiers went outside to keep guard. The others sat down on the edge of the chairs. One offered cigarettes from a package with Hebrew lettering.
Walid brought in the tray with coffee and offered a cup of the thick black brew to each man. A soldier gave a bar of candy to Walid’s five-year-old brother.

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On Thursday, June 29, all barriers came down between the two parts of the Holy City, divided for nineteen years. Arabs from the eastern half became citizens of the reunited Jerusalem. Jews from the western half crossed the former border in a massive jam of cars and pedestrians. Mahmud Barakat did a landslide business, better than anything he’d known at the height of the tourist rushes.

The next Sunday, chemistry student Israel Yisraeli, who as a soldier had drunk coffee with the Barakats at their home in Bet Hanania, took his new friends for a tour of the Jewish half of the city. He took them to Abu Tor where the Barakats had lived until the war of 1948. Mahmud Barakat spoke politely to the Jewish tenants who now lived in his former apartment, and looked around at the old familiar landmarks, all so much smaller. Then Yisraeli took them around the campus of the Hebrew University. For Walid, medical student at Vienna University, it was of special interest. Some of the courses at the medical school were taught in English for the benefit of exchange students. His Hebrew was limited and his English was not as good as his near-perfect German, but there might be a chance, if not this year then perhaps next . . .

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