Stateless

by Alan Gold

  ‘If the vote in the UN in just a few minutes is two-thirds in our favour, then while we Jews are cheering at our freedom, the tanks, artillery and soldiers of five Arab countries will be coming over the hills, invading our borders, destroying our villages, killing our population in their efforts to eradicate this land and make it free of Jews – what the Nazis called Judenrein. Armies and air forces, some British trained and equipped from Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq will invade our sovereign nation.

  ‘Yet we sit here, knowing what’s going to happen in a few hours, and pray for Russia to vote with the United States and other countries, so that we can be free citizens in our own land. So should the vote go our way, brothers and sisters, let us celebrate the moment, but gird our loins for the fight ahead.’

  He glanced around, and saw each and every boy and girl, man and woman in the room staring at him. He tried to read their faces, but couldn’t differentiate between looks of hope and despair. These kids knew nothing about the way Moscow had managed to assassinate so many good Jews in Palestine. Yet there was every indication that they’d vote for the creation of Israel. But he was only a psychiatrist! How could he possibly understand the Russian mind, or the sort of deal which Golda Meir had done in Moscow?

  Immanuel turned up the volume of the radio, and they all listened to the Chairman of the General Assembly begin the process of voting. Three lists were made on three sheets of paper: one for yes, one for no and one for abstentions. Because acceptance of the State of Israel’s creation depended on a two-thirds majority, nobody was certain until the vote came to the Soviet Union whether they had succeeded or not. Yet when Andrei Gromyko voted with a simple ‘yes’, the room erupted into hysterical cheers.

  Immanuel held up his hand for silence. There were still other nations who had to vote. When the voting had finished, the men who had made ticks on the paper added them up quickly and compared notes. One, a farmer from the Galilee village of Peki’in, shouted out, ‘Two-thirds. Two-thirds. We’ve done it.’

  Nobody heard the Chairman of the General Assembly of the United Nations in distant Paris announce the creation of the world’s newest nation. The cheering and hugging and kissing in the room in Jerusalem was cacophonous.

  And nor did anybody celebrating in the room hear the throaty roar of the engines of Arab tanks, jeeps, planes and troop carriers roaring into life on the northern, eastern and southern borders of the State of Israel.

  EPILOGUE

  A hill overlooking Ras Abu Yussuf

  The State of Israel

  19 June 1949

  Shalman Etzion handed his two-year-old daughter Vered a honey biscuit and a half filled beaker of milk. She thanked him. He loved her thin, piping voice, and blew her a kiss, which she returned with determination.

  He smiled when he suddenly realised that it was probably close to this spot, three thousand years earlier, that the ancient Jews, returning from their exile in Egypt, had looked with joy from hills like these into a land of milk and honey.

  Shalman lay down on the rug and looked up at the sky, a deep, almost violet blue. It was a clear sky, no longer full of angry war planes or the smoke from artillery guns or the trace of bullets whizzing through the air. It was a peaceful sky. An Israeli sky.

  ‘How long do you think this will last?’

  It was the same question that Mustafa had asked the previous week, the previous day, and just an hour ago.

  ‘God knows, because He knows everything, and I don’t,’ said Shalman.

  ‘Daddy said God,’ piped up Vered, her mouth full of biscuit, her lips ringed by the creamy white of the milk.

  Mustafa hauled himself from lying on his back, onto his elbow, and looked at Vered. ‘Are you enjoying the picnic, darling?’

  She beamed and nodded vigorously. Then she turned when she thought she heard a noise of some small animal in the undergrowth.

  ‘Do you think the Arab armies will let up, now that they’ve signed an armistice?’ he asked.

  Shalman shrugged. ‘There’s been so much killing, so much hatred. On the one hand, I’m certain that the Jews and the Arabs want this whole disaster to be over. On the other hand, the Arab leaderships have already declared that they’ll never accept Israel in their midst.’

  Mustafa smiled. ‘Why do you Jews always have to have two hands? We Arabs only have one opinion, and the rest is Insha’Allah.’

  Having an ear for languages, Vered mimicked the word Insha’Allah, but couldn’t quite get her little tongue around its cadences.

  Shalman smiled. ‘On the one hand, you saved my life; on the other hand, I saved yours. That’s life.’

  ‘So life returns to normal,’ said Mustafa.

  ‘Normal? If only I knew what that means. But at least the Hebrew University is starting up its archaeology courses again, which means that you can enrol in your degree course, and then we can –’

  ‘Are you crazy? They’ll never accept me. I’m an Arab. A Palestinian. An enemy. No, my friend, forget that. I’m back to being a farmer, doing what my father and his father did.’

  ‘Over my dead body. There’s not a single statement put out by the university authorities that says that Palestinian Arabs are not allowed. If they did, I’d be the first to stand in the middle of the campus and scream from the rooftops.’

  ‘You’re being naïve, Shalman. Our lot has just finished trying to kill your lot. You don’t seriously think for one moment that the Jews are going to allow us Arabs back, as if nothing happened. Do you?’

  Vered, listening to every word and not understanding a thing, repeated quickly, ‘Do you?’

  ‘Now that the armistice has been signed . . .’

  ‘Then you’re an idiot, because –’

  ‘Daddy ijut,’ said Vered.

  Both men looked at her, and she beamed a mischievous smile, knowing that she’d had an impact.

  ‘So much like her mother,’ said Shalman. ‘That, for me, is the greatest tragedy of this war; that women like Judit were the casualties.’

  Mustafa nodded. ‘I wish I could thank her for what she told you. She saved my family. We would have been killed had it not been for her.’

  Shalman put his finger to his lips and nodded towards Vered. ‘I don’t speak in the past tense,’ he told Mustafa. ‘When she asks about Judit, I tell her she’ll be back. How do I know?’

  He said nothing more. How could he? How would he explain to his daughter what had probably happened to her mother or, to Mustafa, the complexities of a woman like Judit? He could never tell his Arab friend, nor Vered, nor anybody, what Immanuel Berin had confided to him shortly after she’d disappeared – that she was a Russian assassin who’d probably been responsible for killing dozens of innocent men and women. It was a secret that he’d take to his grave. It made life intensely hard for him. He still loved Judit, yearned for her, admired all the qualities in her that had made their love so passionate.

  But on the other hand, he hated her with a depth and intensity that frightened him, hated her for the way she’d ruined his life, hated her for the way she’d left Vered to grow up without a mother, hated her for her fanaticism and militancy. But he knew that he had to bury his hatred because he would only damage Vered and those he loved if the truth was ever known.

  ‘Do you ever wonder what happened to her? Where she’s –?’ Mustafa was about to say ‘buried’ but stopped himself, remembering that Vered was a very bright little girl who would probably repeat the word, which would hurt Shalman even more.

  Shalman lifted his arm, and pointed into the Judean wilderness. ‘Somewhere out there. Along with all the thousands of Jews and Arabs and Christians, Bedouin and travellers and wanderers who have criss-crossed this land. Who knows? Remember when you and I found that skeleton in the caves near your home? Maybe one day, a thousand years from now, some archaeologist will discover my Judit’s bones, and . . .’ He fell silent.

  Mustafa nodded. There was nothing more to say. All these two young men could
do – one a Muslim, one a Jew; one a Palestinian and one an Israeli – was stare out into the land of Israel, the land of hope, and beyond into the land of Palestine and the eternity of history. And wonder.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Pablo Picasso said ‘Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.’ In the tough commercial world of publishing, the route of safety is all too often the path dictated. Not so with the stellar team at Simon and Schuster Australia, who saw the daring vision that we presented, and said, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’ So to Lou Johnson, Larissa Edwards, Roberta Ivers, Laurie Ormond, Jo Butler and Jo Jarrah go my most sincere thanks for their confidence, support and advice in the Heritage Trilogy, of which Stateless is the second book.

  My thanks and admiration also to Harold and Rebecca Finger for their continued backing and encouragement. And to Mike Jones, an amazing co-author, whose leaps of imagination often caused him to crash through the ceiling.

  My love for their wisdom and understanding go to my wife Eva, and children Georgina, Jonathan and Raffe, for bearing with me on this long journey to the City on a Hill.

  Alan Gold

  No one writes a book alone, and this book has enjoyed the enormous support of a wonderful circle of collaborators. We could ask for no better partners than our publishers Simon and Schuster Australia – Lou Johnson, Larissa Edwards, Roberta Ivers and the whole S&S team. Likewise Harold Finger, for his passion and faith. Of course, I have to thank my co-writer Alan for having me along to contribute to this wild project he dreamed up. And finally, and most of all, my eternal thanks and love go to Leonie for everything, always and forever.

  Mike Jones

  LOOKING FOR ANOTHER GREAT READ?

  If you missed Bloodline, the first story in the Heritage series, read on for a taste of the first chapter of this epic thriller of power, corruption and family

  Two families … One bloodline … and a city named Jerusalem

  When Bilal HaMizri, a radicalised Palestinian youth, is shot during a botched terrorist attack, his life is saved by a young Jewish surgeon, Yael Cohen. But when Yael makes the startling discovery that her DNA is identical with Bilal’s, they become caught up in a high-stakes conspiracy — a disturbing plot that will blow the region to pieces and stun the world with its audacity.

  But unknown to Bilal and Yael, theirs is the last and bloody chapter in a story that crosses millennia. Century after century, two ancient families —bloodline ancestors of Yael and Bilal — defied the corrupt power of kings and conquerors, and their struggles forged a fiercely proud people and an enduring hope for peace. But through war and atrocity, kinships were shattered, forcing dynasties apart and allowing evil to gain a foothold.

  And in modern Israel, confronted with exposure, those sinister forces will do anything to take control of the Holy Land and silence Yael and Bilal, who must run for their lives. Through imprisonment, assassination attempts and political machinations, they must ultimately confront the truth of who they are.

  But is blood enough?

  www.simonandschuster.com.au

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  BLOODLINE

  16 October 2007

  Slitting the man’s throat wasn’t the problem. Bilal waited, watching the Jew enemy shift position in his chair, and fought to overcome his rising panic by remembering the lessons he’d been taught. One hand over the man’s mouth to stop him screaming as the knife in the other hand sliced through the soft tissue of the throat and all the blood vessels. Keep the hand tightly over his mouth for at least a minute for the lifeblood to drain away. He’d practised the movement in his bedroom until he was fluid as a dancer.

  Bilal crouched and held his breath as the Jew, remembering his duty, stood, scratched himself, walked around his position glancing left and right, up and down, made certain that everything was in order, and then sat again. Bilal saw the man looking directly upwards to the white walls of the ancient city of Jerusalem and the golden mosque beyond; but what was he thinking? And did it matter?

  The panorama in front of Bilal made his heart beat in excitement. The massive walls of the Old City that surrounded the Temple of Solomon gleamed white in the glow of the arc lights. The moon was a thin crescent over the distant mountain ridge. In his rising panic, he tried to calm himself by remembering what his imam had taught him. That the great Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent had built those walls and Bilal even remembered the date: 1538. It was impossibly long ago. Bilal couldn’t even understand how long. But it all seemed so grand and old.

  Above the walls was the grey-blue dome of the third holiest site in Islam, the Al Aqsa Mosque. And beyond that, the gleaming golden cupola of the Masjid Qubbat As-Sakhrah, the Dome of the Rock, both mosques the symbol of Islam’s ancient claim to the city of Jerusalem. Bilal found himself imagining pictures from the stories he’d been told since a child, of Mohammed tethering his wondrous horse al-Buraq, with its head of a woman, wings of an eagle, tail of a peacock and hoofs reaching to the horizon, before ascending on his journey to heaven.

  ‘Peace and Blessings be Upon Him,’ Bilal murmured under his breath as a reverential reflex to using Mohammed’s name. But Bilal’s mission wasn’t to pray. He prayed every Friday in his own mosque and lately, urged on by his imam so that he could familiarise himself with the terrain, he prayed in the Al Aqsa. No, today his mission was to begin taking back Jerusalem; to take revenge on the Jews who had dispossessed his family, destroyed his homeland, made his people into paupers, imprisoned his brother as a terrorist, and cast him as a refugee.

  Jerusalem’s night air was cold, but he felt comfort and warmth when he remembered being in the mosque of Bayt al Gizah, his village just across the valley, sitting at the feet of the imam a month ago, along with twenty other young men from his village. The imam sat cross-legged on a cushion, surrounded by Bilal and his friends on the carpet. His imam was smiling and talking with such ease and confidence about the splendours they would each experience in the afterlife; but then his face and voice became severe as he spoke of the way in which their people, the Palestinian people, were daily abused and murdered, tortured and brutalised by the Jews. He asked each youth on his way home that night to glance over the valley towards the city of Jerusalem; to look at the glory of the mosques, one gold and the other silver, their subtlety and quiet beauty, and then to look at the gaudy, tawdry and immoral modern city the infidels had built. One day it would be gone.

  When they were leaving the mosque, the imam asked Bilal to wait. At first he thought the imam had made a mistake, confusing him with one of the older boys who Bilal so looked up to. But from the moment he spoke, Bilal knew that his words were for him, and him alone. Barely able to breathe, the young man wondered why the imam had held him back. Was it because of the way he worshipped? Was it to ask him to do a job? Was it to say something now that he was approaching his eighteenth birthday? It was none of these.

  ‘Allah has chosen you for a special purpose, Bilal.’

  The boy made no response but his heart thudded in his chest. Of all the prospects of hope and excitement that the sentence suggested, it was the sound of his own name from the imam’s lips that filled him with the greatest pride and settled any doubt that his holy teacher spoke only to him. His shoes were worn near through, his family wasn’t rich and he’d long since stopped going to school. But there, staring up at the imam, he felt for a moment like a prince.

  ‘You will be among the blessed. You, Bilal, will be a hero to our people, the pride of your mother and father. You will strike a blow from which the enemy will never recover. And I will ensure that your name is inscribed in the holiest of holy books and kept in pride of place in Mecca.’

  ‘Me? My name?’ Bilal could barely speak.

  The imam smiled and put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. ‘You, my so
n. Though I’ve only been your leader for a year, I have grown to love you and the other young men who have flocked to sit at my feet and listen to the words of Mohammed, Peace and Blessings be Upon Him. And in these past months, you, as well as a number of others, have impressed me, Bilal. You will lead the fight of our people against the Zionist enemy. Soon, I will inform you of a mission I wish you to undertake.’

  Close to tears of pride, Bilal whispered, ‘I won’t let you down, Master. This, I swear.’

  And during the month, the imam and the mosque’s bomb-maker had worked hard to ensure that Bilal’s mission would be successful. His training done, his prayers said, his will written, his face and voice recorded for all the world to admire on the internet, Bilal stood in the shadow of the wall with the imam’s words still fresh in his ears. He smiled to himself as he waited and watched the Israeli guard shift his position protecting the entrance that led into the tunnel. He ached to strike a blow for the freedom of his oppressed people, to reclaim his land from the Jews. He lived a degraded life in a crowded village while just over the valley the Jews lived in luxury houses and had maids and manservants and wore gold jewellery and drove expensive foreign cars around a city that should have been his.

  Bilal was a Palestinian but his culture told him he was born a refugee because of the 1948 war, and the war of 1968, and the war of 1972, and the other wars waged by fearless Arab armies to push the Jews back into the sea. Each war, each attempt to eliminate the Jewish presence from Palestine, had ended in failure and misery, but the Jews were few, and the Arabs were many and they could wait for a hundred, even a thousand years to win, but win they surely would, according to his imam.

  And so Bilal waited patiently for the right time to kill the Jew. He hated waiting, but his imam had told him that patience and judging the moment were more important to his mission than rashly moving forward and exposing himself to the enemy.