Authors: Dion Nissenbaum
“You have to help me,”
Abbasi told Israeli.
“The entire village expects me to bring it back. All my honor and respect hangs on this. Please help me get it back quickly.”
Israeli was happy to helpâso long as he could use the crisis to Israel's advantage. Israeli wanted to use the handover to take a swipe at the United Nations. He suggested that Israel give Abbasi the horse the next day at the UN headquarters on a ridge next to Abu Tor, not at Mandelbaum Gate. Abbasi blanched at the idea, but Israeli persuaded him to go along with the plan. Israeli called the general in command at the UN Government House and told him about the agreement. The general, Israeli said, rejected the idea out of concern it would damage the UN gardens. “OK,” Israeli told the United Nations, “I'll call some reporters and tell them that the UN is blocking a deal between Israel and Jordan.”
The handoff took place the next day at the UN headquarters.
Horses, sheep, cattle and dogs weren't the only ones to venture into No Man's Land. Adventurous kids would sometimes sneak through the fence to rescue playground balls. Soldiers from one side or the other would risk being shot to gather eggs, vegetables or fruit in No Man's Land. And young men on the hunt for a daring adventure also tested border security. One night sometime in the early 1950s, while Rubinger was drinking with friends at a neighborhood barâFink'sâin West Jerusalem, two guys came in waving a pair of movie tickets from a cinema in the Old City, across the No Man's Land, in Jordan. How they got into East Jerusalem, they didn't say.
“It was a suicidal thing to do,” Rubinger said.
The failure of Israel and Jordan to eliminate No Man's Land paved the way for it to become the setting for surreal moments that trumped cow courts and sheep counts. One man claimed he was the Messiah and wandered babbling into No Man's Land near the Old City. Another guy made local news when he stormed out of his house during an argument with his wife and marched straight into No Man's Land before he did something he might regret.
“Husband Cools Off in No Man's Land,” read the headline of a tiny August 16, 1959,
Jerusalem Post
article about the domestic fight that became an international dispute.
20
A 27-year-old resident of Jerusalem's Musrara quarter, Avraham Abu-Gzar, got into a quarrel with his wife yesterday afternoon and, after beating her, announced his intention of crossing the border into Jordan. He actually went into No Man's Land and disappeared among the empty houses.
Police were called and asked to contact the U.N., and Jordanian authorities . . . but, wise in the ways of quarreling husbands, [they] advised everybody to sit tight for awhile. Sure enough, at 4:15 p.m.âthree quarters of an hour after Abu-Gzar had disappearedâhe reappeared, having decided not to cross into Jordan after all. Police detained him and released him on . . . bond.
The beating appeared to be part of a turbulent train wreck of a marriage. The short story only hinted at its troubles: a violent husband; a wife who was living with another man in another city; and three children looking for a stable home.
“They will decide today if and how to charge the contrite husband,” the reporter wrote. “Two years ago, Mrs. Abu-Gzar left her husband to live in Haifa with another man. She came to Jerusalem on Friday to see her husband before a Rabbinate Court this week which is to decide on the custody of their three children.”
Jordan to Israel: Stop the Toilet
Perhaps the most absurd fight over No Man's Land took place at Eliyahu Goeli's hillside home in Abu Tor.
Living in the cross fire, the Goelis settled into an unusual routine. They would creep through the barbed wire and into No Man's Land to recover eggs laid by their chickens. Sometimes they had to scramble after the chickens themselves. They waved to friendly Jordanian soldiers, who kept constant watch from a rooftop below. They rushed across open ground on the hilltop to avoid being targeted by malicious border guards. The family learned to tell the difference between the snap of rifle rounds over their heads and the echoes of machine gun fire across the valley.
The Goelis' home was part of a small compound owned by Jerusalem's Greek Orthodox Church. There was a small monastery on the other side of the property from the Goelis and a few other homes tucked under the trees. After Eliyahu staked his claim, others moved in.
In February 1966, the Goelis and their neighbors decided they needed to repair their outhouse. The bathroom was in serious disrepair. So they brought in some concrete blocks and started rebuilding, oblivious to the outrage boiling on the Jordanian side.
On February 10, Jordanian officials fired off an urgent demand that the United Nations immediately step in and bring the construction in No Man's Land to a halt. The next day, when Jordanian officials learned the Israelis were still building, Abbasi, then head of the Jordanian military team in Jerusalem, sent a charged warning to the United Nations:
“If you don't stop the construction, we will.”
“Col. Daoud said that if we didn't take measures to get the work stopped, he would find the way of stopping it himself,” a UN official told his superiors.
21
But it didn't stop. The workers kept coming. On the third day, the Jordanians fired off a more threatening complaint.
“To keep the peace in Jerusalem, we request immediate stoppage of the work being done until the case is discussed by the MAC,” the Jordanian delegation demanded.
22
UN investigators converged on Abu Tor to investigate the latest border dispute. They secretly snapped photographs that captured blurred images of young men working on the outhouse. They interviewed people building the toilet. They measured the size of the outhouse and the thickness of its concrete blocks. The dispute dragged on for weeks. Jordanian officials accused Israel of using the toilet as a pretext for covertly building a new military post in No Man's Land. Israelis mocked the Jordanians for being so worked up over a tiny five-foot by eight-foot toilet.
On March 8, the Israeli and Jordanian delegations met at the MAC offices for a second time to argue over the home improvement project. The two sides agreed that the house was in No Man's Land. They didn't see eye-to-eye on the toilet itself. In 1951, Israel and Jordan had reached an agreement under which a few people already living in No Man's Landâpeople like the Goelisâwould be allowed to stay. Israel and Jordan selected a few dozen homes in No Man's Land they wanted to protect and agreed to provide power and services to a few on each side. The deal tacitly ceded parts of No Man's Land to one nation or the other. Israel and Jordan agreed that people living in the homes should be allowed to live a “normal life.” In this case, the two countries couldn't agree on what that meant. Exasperated UN officials tried to mediate. Israelis thought it was absurd to think that repairing the bathroom would be forbidden.
“What does it mean?” asked Lt. Col. Yair Biberman, the Israeli military representative called upon to fight for the outhouse. “Does it mean that this building will remain without a toilet?”
23
No, the Israeli colonel could not accept this.
“Once it was agreed that normal life will proceed there, that means that such an elementary thing as a toilet is entirely within the authority of the people living in that building to repair and to change.”
24
The Jordanians disagreed. Abbasi said no deal between the two countries allowed people in No Man's Land to build extra rooms on their houses, no matter the size. If Jordan allowed Israel to repair the toilet, it would set a precedent for Israelis to build dozens of buildings that would be perfect new sniper positions for their soldiers.
“If this kind of work is allowed to continue for a few months more, we will have 25,000 annexes to one house,” he said at a March emergency meeting at the UN office. “This is the intention of those who built up this agreement, and I am sure that you know it.”
25
On March 14, the diplomats met to decide the outhouse's fate. By a vote of two to one, the MAC condemned Israel for building the outhouse and called for its removal from No Man's Land.
“Let my concluding words be an earnest appeal to the parties to find a satisfactory solution which will prevent future similar situations with a view to preventing tension in this sensitive area,” said Lt. Col. M. C. Stanaway, an army officer from New Zealand who was then serving as chairman of the UN commission, at the close of the fourth hearing and 18 hours of arguing.
26
For the Israelis this was a victory. The United Nations condemned the construction, but the outhouse remained standing.
“We used to draw up a balance-sheet of condemnations, and even evolved a kind of tactical strategy during these protest wars,” Israeli Gen. Uzi Narkiss wrote in his memoir. “I, of course, was fully aware that the real decision would be made not at the debating table of the MAC, but on the line itself, where the number of hands raised for or against would not decide the issue, but the number of Israeli civilians living permanently on the line, earning their living and raising their children.”
27
Narkiss understood that having civilians like the Goelis, who were willing to put down roots on disputed landâwhat modern politicians would call “facts on the ground”âmattered more than placing soldiers on the border.
“I will always remember a talk I had with a young officer early in my command,” he wrote. “I pointed out to him that his patrol passed a part of the line in one of the mixed quarters. âBut we don't need to demonstrate our presence there,' he said innocently. âThe Jewish children playing near the fence demonstrate the presence.'”
28
It was a constant battle over inches. The inability to agree on what to do with the No Man's Land meant that there was always new ground to fight over. It wasn't just about toilets or sheep. One of the biggest fights of the time was over trees.
“Bulldozers Aren't Machine Guns”
Few people probably paid much attention to the small story on page three of the
Jerusalem Post
on August 15, 1957: “100,000 Trees for Jerusalem Border.”
The story seemed to be a yawner, a little newspaper filler, about Israel's latest tree-planting project.
It was actually an early public salvo in another Arab-Israeli fight that would have to be settled by the UN Security Council.
“Over 100,000 trees are to be planted this coming season near the ceasefire lines in Jerusalem,” the three-paragraph story began. “The trees will be planted by the Jewish National Fund [JNF], right up to the border from Talpiot to Abu Tor. Preparatory work for the planting is already being carried out at the site. The Forest Division of the Ministry of Agriculture has announced that over 20,000 dunhams [5,000 acres] of marginal lands unfit for cultivation are to be planted with Eucalyptus trees, starting this winter.”
29
As Israel put it, this was environmental activism at its best. Israeli officials described the tree planting as a citywide beautification effort meant to eventually encircle then-divided Jerusalem in a green belt. To Jordan, it was a blatant act of aggression. These weren't just trees;
Jordan viewed the saplings as another way for Israelis to steal contested property from Arab owners who were powerless to stop the land grab.
The fight had quietly begun earlier that summer when Israeli workers, protected by soldiers, entered No Man's Land to begin planting. Tractors and bulldozers uprooted dozens of olive trees to make way for the Israeli reforestation effort.
30
Jordanian soldiers watched from afar as the project grew. Day after day more workers came. So did the soldiers. They began plowing fields, carving out new roads, building barbed wire fences and installing what appeared to be new mortar positions.
31
On July 24, Lt. Col. M. M. Izhaq, the senior member of the Jordanian team at the MAC, fired off a detailed demand to the United Nations for an emergency meeting.
“Statement of Facts,” his complaint began. “On 21 July 1957 Israeli labourers escorted by Israeli security forces entered the No Man's Land between the lines at approximately MR 1724 1288 and MR 17240 12893 and started digging.” This, Col. Izhaq wrote, was a “flagrant violation of the status quo.” An emergency meeting had to be called to force Israel to stop the work. Immediately.
32
The head of the MAC unsuccessfully sought to defuse the situation by asking the Israelis to halt the tree-planting project. Israeli officials said no. They refused to take part in an emergency meeting to discuss it. They were going to keep digging.
The fight over the trees brought No Man's Land back to center stage. In this case, the battle took on special importance because the two sides were fighting over land near the UN headquarters in Jerusalem. Built in the early 1930s, the UN Government House served as home and headquarters for the British High Commissioner while England ruled Palestine. The locals called it the Government Palace. It was where the British elite hosted parties in elegant halls with high ceilings and chandeliers.
When Dayan and Tell sat down to draw their map in November 1948, they drew wide lines around the Government House, creating a fat No Man's Bulge over the sparsely populated valley. As in Abu Tor, Israel and Jordan agreed that a fixed number of civilians already living in the area “between the lines” would be allowed to stay. Around the UN compound, Israel and Jordan both agreed to limit that number to 200 apiece. The area became a wide demilitarized zone.
Dayan repeatedly tried to convince Jordan to divide No Man's Land. In Jerusalem, Dayan persuaded one of his Jordanian counterparts to accept division of the area by creating an informal “civilian line” through the middle, but the idea was rejected in Amman, where Arab leaders weren't prepared to willingly cede any part of
Jerusalem to Israel. Although the two sides never officially agreed to divide the No Man's Land, they sometimes acted as if they had, creating a de facto split that was tacitly acceptedâas long as neither side complained.