Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

by Sandy Tolan

  Reaction to the UN vote was swift: Palestinians, backed by other Arab leaders, immediately rejected the partition and pledged to fight it. Why, they asked, should their homeland become the solution to the Jewish problem in Europe? Jews in Palestine and around the world celebrated. In Jerusalem, Yitzhak Yitzhaki, Solia's cousin, joined a crowd at the Jewish Agency on King George Street "and danced and danced throughout the night." In Bulgaria, a thousand miles to the north, Moshe and Solia Eshkenazi were elated. At last, after the Holocaust, the world had seen the justice in the Zionist cause.

  Zionist leaders had accepted the partition concept the previous year, abandoning an earlier position that favored a "Jewish commonwealth" across the whole of Palestine. Still, in the wake of the UN vote for partition, David Ben-Gurion worried about the large Arab minority on the land set aside for the Jews. "Such a composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish state," Ben-Gurion told Zionist labor leaders shortly after the United Nations vote. "With such a composition, there cannot be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority. This fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. . . . There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only sixty [actually 55] percent."

  As soon as the UN vote was announced, Yitzhaki received word "that the Arabs were not accepting the partition and that intensified attacks on Jerusalem were expected. I was notified to show up the next day to go up to Mt. Scopus as protection for the hospital and the university." On November 30, Yitzhaki traveled to Mt. Scopus in a convoy of armored Jewish buses. As the convoy approached the Jewish neighborhood of Shimon Ha-Zadik, "there was an explosion." Yitzhaki dived onto the wooden floor of the bus and found himself next to a beautiful young woman with thick black braids. "Don't worry, it will be all right," he told the woman hopefully as they heard more explosions. Their bus had passed over a mine laid in the road, but it exploded behind the bus just after it passed, saving the passengers, including Yitzhaki and the young woman on the floor beside him. Eventually the bus resumed its journey up Mt. Scopus, and Yitzhaki learned the name of the woman who would become his wife: Varda Carmon.

  The same day, Arabs attacked a Jewish bus near al-Ramla, on the Jaffa-Jerusalem road. A three-day Arab strike in protest of the vote led to violent clashes in Jerusalem, with fourteen people dead, Arabs and Jews. It was only the beginning.

  Arab states, and the ex-mufti, were making plans to mobilize troops in Palestine. Throngs of people filled the public squares in the Arab capitals, shouting their approval. Egypt's minister of war boasted that "the Egyptian military is capable on its own of occupying Tel Aviv, the capital of Jews, in fifteen days. . . . " It appeared that Arab armies could eliminate the Jewish state before it was even established. On the other side, Zionist forces had been preparing themselves for months, mobilizing to secure arms and to recruit young Jewish men, many of whom were Holocaust survivors fresh from the DP camps in Europe. These battered refugees-turned-soldiers were highly motivated to defend their new homeland and joined an organized infrastructure that had been decades in the making. The Haganah would soon develop detailed battle plans, including the control of Jewish areas beyond the UN partition line, in an area designated as part of an Arab state. The future shape of Palestine, it was increasingly clear, would be determined by the facts on the ground, not by what the United Nations had put on paper. "The boundaries of the state," Ben-Gurion wrote, "will not be determined by a U.N. resolution, but by the force of arms."

  In early 1948, a series of bombs planted by Arab and Jewish militias killed scores of people in Jerusalem—at the Semiramis Hotel, at the Palestine Post, and on Ben Yehuda Street in West Jerusalem. During the same period, the Haganah attacked Arab towns and villages, driving out thousands; the refugees began fleeing for safe haven in the cities. Arab fighters attacked Jewish settlements, blocked roads in the Negev, and continued their attacks on Jewish traffic at two key transit points between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean coast. One was the mountain pass at Bab al-Wad, or the Gate of the Valley; the other was along the Jaffa-Jerusalem road in al-Ramla, where Ahmad and his family had been growing increasingly nervous.

  One night in early April 1948, the Khairi home was jolted by a series of blasts coming from the edge of town. Soon the news arrived: The headquarters of Hassan Salameh, the ex-mufti's commander whose base was just outside al-Ramla, had been devastated. Recruits from the Haganah had blown a rocket through the fence surrounding the headquarters, then thrown explosives into the building, bringing it down in a series of spectacular explosions. At least seventeen of the mufti's men were killed. Volunteers rushed to the scene from al-Ramla and Lydda. Eyewitnesses saw body parts hanging from the trees.

  The Khairis and the people of al-Ramla grew increasingly worried. If the mufti's commander could not guard even his own headquarters, how could he protect the city's residents?

  A few days later, the family learned of another devastating blow: The Arabs of Palestine had lost their most revered commander when Abd al-Qader al-Husseini, nephew of the ex-mufti, was killed in the battle for Qastal. Control of the hill at Qastal meant control of the road, and therefore the supply lines, between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean ports forty miles to the west. The loss of the hill was crippling to the Arab cause. Even this defeat, however, was not as terrifying as the news that reached Ahmad at about the same time: At Deir Yassin, an Arab village just west of Jerusalem, Jewish militia had massacred hundreds of women, children, and unarmed men. Details were scarce, but the family heard stories of innocents being lined up and shot in their homes by the militia of the Irgun and Stern Gang. There were rumors of rape. Ahmad and Zakia were terrified. They had nine children, seven of them girls.

  In one day, the Arabs of Palestine had lost their greatest commander, their most important battle, and dozens of innocents at Deir Yassin. Just as disturbing for the Khairis, in the aftermath of the attack on Hassan Salameh's headquarters, al-Ramla seemed more vulnerable. Already the strategically located town had become a flashpoint in the ongoing struggle to control the supply routes between Jerusalem and the coast. Ahmad and Zakia saw that their children's lives might be in danger.

  Yitzhak Yitzhaki had similar concerns. He had written home to Bulgaria of his assignment on Mt. Scopus with the Haganah to protect the university and the hospital. In Sofia, Moshe and Solia were following Yitzhaki's movements and had learned through his letters that Arab forces had cut off Jewish supply lines at the mountain pass of Bab al-Wad and that hunger was growing among the Jewish population of Jerusalem. "But at Mt. Scopus, we had food," Yitzhaki would recall. "We received parachuted supplies by night." At Passover, in early April 1948, Yitzhaki and his fellow Haganah recruits succeeded in securing the road between Jerusalem and Mt. Scopus. "Then we could take a little twenty-four-hour vacation in Jerusalem." There he mailed a letter home to Bulgaria, telling his family he was on his way back to Mt. Scopus the next day.

  "The next afternoon, I show up at the appointed place ready to go up with the caravan of the three Jewish buses back to Mt. Scopus," Yitzhaki said. Varda wanted him to stay in Jerusalem for one more night. "But I have to go back," Yitzhaki protested. Varda had connections in the Haganah and succeeded in winning her boyfriend another day off, though the commander warned Yitzhaki: "Tomorrow's caravan will not be as safe as this one."

  That evening, April 13, Yitzhaki and Varda went to see a movie at Cinema Edison in West Jerusalem. Yitzhaki couldn't concentrate. "I had a bad feeling and I felt very restless. Suddenly, we heard shooting and explosions. 'This is our caravan. I know it,' I said to Varda. I ran out to the headquarters. There I was told that armed Arabs stopped the caravan." Arab fighters had attacked the convoy on its way to Hadassah Hospital. The attackers burned the buses and killed everyone inside. Seventy-eight people died. Most were doctors and nurses.

  "Up on Mt. Scopus, I was counted as one of the dead," Yitzhaki said. "And indeed, I felt that I myself was there in those buses. It was
terrible, terrible to live with this. When my family heard of what happened, they were sure that I was killed. What added to the anguish was that most of the bodies could not be identified, except through someone's personal objects, like rings." In Bulgaria, Moshe's, Solia's, and Yitzhaki's immediate families in Sliven and Burgas went into mourning.

  Even in the midst of the fighting, some Arab leaders in al-Ramla and neighboring Lydda were trying to maintain contact with their Jewish neighbors. Two months earlier, the mayor of Lydda received his Jewish counterpart, Ziegfried Lehman, a medical doctor born in Berlin and now a leader from the nearby Jewish settlement of Ben Shemen. The mayor agreed to Dr. Lehman's request to keep the road open between the communities. In a few places, hope remained for a peaceful settlement.

  In early May, Bedouin fighters began arriving in al-Ramla from the east on the orders of King Abdullah of Transjordan. "We slaughtered many lambs in their honor and received them as a liberation army," Khanom remembered. "They gave us assurances and the word of King Abdullah himself that we would be safe and be able to stay in al-Ramla." Many of the Bedouins were barefoot and in the coming days would use their rifles to shoot pigeons for food. They would be remembered as moody, mercenary, and courageous. With their small numbers and meager weapons, they did not appear equipped to defend the town against an invading force and were belittled by some locals as the "barefoot brigade." King Abdullah, however, had promised "enough force to defend Arab lives," and people in al-Ramla were hopeful that the Bedouins were simply the advance guard of a much larger force. There was reason to worry, however. Elsewhere internal Arab frictions were causing logistical problems: In Haifa, a mixed Arab-Jewish city along the northern coast of Palestine, arms intended for one Arab militia were being intercepted by another. In Jaffa, an Arab town ten miles west of al-Ramla, two military coordinators were each giving separate and sometimes conflicting sets of orders. Divisions among the Arabs, both within and outside of Palestine, were weakening them. On May 13, Jaffa fell, and refugees began filling al-Ramla's streets.

  A short time later, scores of other families began drifting into al-Ramla from the south. They had fled Na'ani, a village of orange groves and watermelon fields a few miles away, after a Jewish farmer had galloped into the village on horseback, shouting, "The Jewish army is coming! You must leave, or you will all be killed!" The people of Na'ani knew this man as Khawaja Shlomo—Shlorno the Stranger. He was a neighbor from Na'an, the kibbutz next door. They had never seen him in such a state of agitation, and at first they didn't take his warnings seriously. But they were on good terms with this Jewish neighbor, and he was insistent, yelling from his horse, "No, no, no! If you stay, they will kill you!" The villagers were well aware of the horrors of Deir Yassin, which had already caused panic and flight from villages across Palestine. They felt they had no choice but to believe Shlomo. They arrived in al-Ramla carrying virtually nothing, assuming they would return to Na'ani as soon as the danger had passed.

  By now Ahmad Khairi found himself living in a town he scarcely recognized. Refugees slept under trees in Khairi orchards, crowded the coffee shops and markets, and choked the streets near Ahmad's furniture workshop.

  Ahmad was growing increasingly nervous about allowing Zakia and the children to remain in al-Ramla. He began to consider a temporary safe haven for them. Within forty-eight hours, the British would be leaving Palestine for good, and whatever little order their presence provided in al-Ramla would be gone. Local Arab merchants were hurriedly buying surplus pants, uniforms, and shoes from the British army as the colonial forces packed up their garrison and prepared to sail north toward England.

  On May 14, in the nearby coastal city of Tel Aviv, David Ben-Gurion declared Israel's independence in an address to the Jewish Provisional Council. "It is," he proclaimed, "the self-evident right of the Jewish people to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own Sovereign State." The next day, Ben-Gurion broadcast word of the new state of Israel by live radio to the United States; in the background, listeners could hear the rumble and explosion of Egyptian planes bombing Tel Aviv. The Jewish leader would describe the conflict as "seven hundred thousand Jews pitted against twenty-seven million Arabs—one against forty." More relevant were the fighting forces on the ground, and there, in fact, all Jewish and Arab forces were relatively even as the war officially began. Only days before, American diplomats had expressed skepticism that the Arabs would put up more than a "token" fight. President Harry Truman wrote to Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who would become the first president of Israel: "I sincerely hope that the Palestine situation will work out on an equitable and peaceful basis."

  Truman had barely signed his letter when Egyptian ground forces were attacking Israeli settlements in the Negev and advancing toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; Syrian and Iraqi forces were entering Palestine from the east; and soldiers of King Abdullah's Arab Legion were crossing the Jordan River and marching west. Legion forces took up positions in Ramallah and Nablus north of Jerusalem, on lands Abdullah wanted for the "West Bank" of his desert kingdom.

  The same day, May 15, as the Arab troops converged on the new Jewish state, Irgun forces were approaching al-Ramla.

  Al-Ramla men lay behind sandbags in shallow trenches they had dug with oxen and hand tools. Their crude defense posts were at the western and southern edges of town. Zafer Khairi, Sheikh Mustafa's son, was in charge of part of the western defenses. Now, with the mufti's soldiers and the Bedouin "barefoot brigades" alongside, the volunteer fighters would undergo their most serious test.

  Bursts of machine-gun fire echoed near the train tracks close to the Khairi home. Then came earsplitting explosions as shells landed nearby. Outside, two hundred Jewish fighters were trying to penetrate al-Ramla from the west. The Irgun was fighting for control of the Jaffa-Jerusalem road, to ensure the flow of goods and to stop Arab attacks on Jewish convoys. The fighting was fierce. In some quarters of the city, Arabs and Jews were struggling desperately with bayonets in hand-to-hand combat. "The whole city," one Israeli account declared, became "one big battlefield. The Arabs have vast amounts of weapons and are fighting tenaciously. Hundreds of shells are falling on houses throughout the city, and the Arabs have suffered heavy casualties. . . . Wave after wave, the Jews charged into the street battles." It wasn't clear who was winning or how long al-Ramla's defenders could hold out.

  After the massacre by Irgun forces in Deir Yassin, the specter of that militia penetrating al-Ramla had city leaders in a state of near panic. They sent urgent cables to King Abdullah and to the commander of his Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb, pleading for immediate help and invoking fears of another slaughter. One voice cried, "Our wounded are breathing their last breaths, and we cannot help them."

  Abdullah, however, had received similar pleas from Arabs in Jerusalem, begging him to "save us!" and warning that Jewish forces were scaling the walls of the Old City. The king wrote Glubb that "any disaster suffered by the people of the city at the hands of the Jews, whether they are killed or driven from their homes, would have the most far reaching results for us." He ordered his commander to Jerusalem. On May 19, Glubb rolled into the Holy City to confront Israeli forces with a force of three hundred men, four antitank weapons, and a squadron of armored cars. On Arab-run Radio Jerusalem, commentator Raji Sahyoun had promised "our forthcoming redemption by the hand of Transjordan" and the "scurrying" and "collapse" of the "Haganah kids."

  Abdullah's secret agreement with the Jews did not envision this fighting: It was designed to accept a Jewish state within the UN partition boundaries while the king took over the West Bank and most of the state designated for the Arabs, including al-Ramla and Lydda. Now fighting on the ground made all of this uncertain. Yet Arab Legion forces did not cross into territory allotted by the UN partition resolution to the Jewish state.

  For some Israeli leaders, however, the king's move on Jerusalem showed his true intentions. It represented a declaration of war and a joining with other Arab forces intent on destroyi
ng the Jewish state. Abdullah's move had only deepened the Jewish leaders' sense that they were under siege from all sides. Several days earlier, according to accounts from Kfar Etzion, a Jewish settlement bloc south of Jerusalem, Jewish civilians had been massacred by Arab villagers as they tried to surrender to Arab Legion troops. With the king's forces converging on the Jewish quarter in East Jerusalem, Abdullah, they believed, was not to be trusted.

  Civilians on each side were under attack. Desperate Arabs within the walls of the Old City, whose urgent pleas compelled the king to act, were relieved when his Arab Legion forces arrived; residents of the Jewish quarter, who would soon surrender, were terrified. In the western part of the city, Arab residents felt mortars shake their homes, growing closer by the hour, and many fled eastward toward Transjordan; Jewish residents would recall enduring thirst, hunger, and dwindling arms and ammunition during the siege by Arab forces.

  Glubb had been reluctant to enter Jerusalem. He was more concerned about controlling the supply lines between Jerusalem and the coast, especially at Latrun, a key junction between Jerusalem and al-Ramla. With forces now committed to Latrun and Jerusalem, he told Abdullah, he could not be expected to send additional troops to reinforce the Arab towns of Lydda and al-Ramla. Those towns would have to defend themselves with what they had.

  On May 19, as Glubb's Arab Legion entered the Old City and Radio Jerusalem played patriotic Arab songs, Irgun forces attacked al-Ramla for the fourth time in as many days, pounding the city from the west. Dressed in English and American battle fatigues, they moved forward with armored trucks, machine guns, and mortars.