Where the Desert Meets the Sea

by Werner Sonne

Hana bought a copy of the Palestine Post, the English-language paper in the British Mandate region.

Rising from the Old City walls crowned with battlements is the Temple Mount, which Arabs call Haram esh-Sharif and Jews call Har Habayit. The mosque’s golden dome shone in the morning sun, above the rock upon which Abraham had nearly sacrificed his son. From here, tradition had it, the prophet Mohammed had ascended to heaven on his horse, accompanied by the Archangel Gabriel. After Mecca and Medina, it was the most important site of Islam, built by the Muslims right where the Temple of the Jews had once stood. When Roman legionnaires destroyed the Temple two thousand years before, they’d left the part of the foundation now known as the Wailing Wall.

“These people don’t understand peaceful coexistence,” Horowitz started in again. “It’s either them or us.”

Judith felt the bandage on her wrist. She had survived. But for what? At Dachau, she and the other prisoners, they had one goal. All they thought about was making it to the next day, and the one after that, and the one after that. They shared a kind of solidarity in their misery. Now, here she was, in a clean bed, but she had no goal. Make it to the next day for what? She was alone, alone in a strange land.

Higgins was in a sour mood. Those Jews out there were becoming more and more brazen. And more dangerous. Every report of an attack on British soldiers passed across his desk here in the outer office of the commanding general of British Armed Forces in Palestine. Higgins had been at this for twenty years—India, Yemen, then the invasion of Normandy, finally Germany. He’d been with the troops that liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In the beginning, he felt compassion for the victims of the Nazis. But then he was transferred to Palestine. Higgins had been in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when the Irgun bombed it. He had escaped with an ear injury. Over seventy people had died. Since then, the Jews’ attacks on the military had only increased. British headquarters in Jerusalem resembled a fortress now, surrounded by rows of barbed wire. They called it Bevingrad, after Foreign Secretary Bevin. As with most soldiers, Higgins’s sympathy for the Jews had vanished completely.

Also like most of the soldiers, Higgins now wanted only one thing: to get home to his family in Lancashire. If the Jews and Arabs were so keen on war, then they could solve the Palestine problem themselves. No one had a solution, neither the men in London nor the British Mandate government. Now the United Nations was supposed to find a way. Please do, Higgins thought, and best of luck.

“I did. Yes, I saw it all. At first, I thought it had to be that way; it was a part of war, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. The toll that must be paid to make Germany great again. And then came the doubt. Not just because of Stalingrad. The British air raids were getting more severe every night. My father died in the bombing, my mother six months later, and then of course, the concentration camps. I wasn’t there myself, but I knew about it. I can’t sugarcoat it—I’d taken part in too many other things. But at some point, I saw that it was wrong. I tried to help where I could. Maybe not decisively enough, maybe not bravely enough, maybe too late. But one day, when I was letting an elderly Jewish woman escape, they caught me, labeled me a deserter, traitor. And sent me straight to Dachau. I thought, now it’s over for me too. And I felt relieved, despite it all.”

He’d spent the final months of the war as a young army doctor in the Pacific, where they were still fighting for weeks after the last guns in Europe had already fallen silent, and he’d seen what the atomic bomb in Hiroshima had done to the people there. At first, he hadn’t seen the newsreel footage from the camps with names he’d never heard before: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau. Only when he returned to New York was it clear to him what had happened in Europe. He had never been a devout Jew. The only time his family actually ever practiced was on Yom Kippur and a little bit at Hanukkah, to compensate for the Christmas festivities all around them. But after the war, David started becoming interested in his own history, his roots. His grandparents had emigrated from Ukraine at the end of the nineteenth century; he remembered them still speaking Yiddish at home. After the war, the news kept growing that attested to the unimaginable: the Nazis had killed millions of European Jews. Systematically. It had made David feel like a Jew for the first time, a survivor of a race the Nazis had designated for total extermination. So, when he read in the New York Times about Hadassah Hospital, he applied on impulse. That was a year ago now, in early 1946.

“One can hardly blame the Arabs,” he continued. “I mean, they’ve been living here for centuries, and now here come the Jews and say: this is our homeland, it says so in the Bible, so you better make room for us.”

Uri continued: “He’s a British officer. And the Brits are worse than the Arabs. The Arabs fight us, and many hate us, but that’s because they fear for their land. But the Brits, they’re just playing little games with us. First they so generously promise us a homeland with their Balfour Declaration, then they back out. And now, now all they care about is their strategic position in the Middle East, about the oil in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia, about the Suez Canal, about their empire. Jews are disrupting their plans. We’re a nuisance to them.” He was working himself into a rant. “When Rommel was closing in on the Suez Canal, suddenly they let us wear their uniforms, suddenly they formed the Jewish Brigade. And you know what? They made me an officer, just like your brother. That’s right, I wore their uniform too. I was with them in Egypt, in Italy, then in Vienna, and even in Germany briefly. But no sooner had the war ended than we’d served our purpose to them, and again they turned back to the Arabs. Now they fight us, thwart us, bully us, courting the Arabs whenever possible. Most of them are worse anti-Semites than the Nazis.” He spat at the ground in disgust. “But we’re not going to accept that. When they put pressure on us, we’ll put the pressure right back on them. When they shoot at our people, we’ll shoot back. And it’s working: now they’re looking for a way to be rid of the Palestine problem. Please do. We’re happy to help.” Judith turned away and slowly walked back over ...

“Yes, that is true,” Judith concurred. “God, most Merciful and Almighty, praise be to his name, wishes that we live together,” the old man continued. “But some are not ready to obey God’s will.” Judith understood. By now, she had learned that most of the villagers wanted to continue living in peace with their Jewish neighbors. They’d benefited from it. Whenever a doctor came from Tel Aviv, he also treated the villagers. “There is much hate in some people,” he said. “It comes from far away.” He gestured with his head toward the east, to where the Golan Heights stood, part of Syria. “They do not want peace.” Again he clapped his hands, and again the woman appeared and topped off their tea.

valley again. “How was the mukhtar?” Yael asked in a weary voice. “Conciliatory.” “I don’t think this peace is going to last long,” Yael replied. Judith set her hands in her lap. “How long has the village actually been there?” “The village? No idea. For ages. Under the crusaders, under the Turks, now under the British. The Arabs have simply had to comply. They get by, just barely. You saw it yourself, all poor, mostly illiterate, the way it’s always been.” “But—” Judith’s voice hung in the air. “But what?” “But it is their homeland, after all. You just said they’ve been living here for centuries.” “Yeah? So?” “I mean, now here we come. No wonder they’re scared we’re going to take it away from them.” Yael straightened up. “Judith, they’ve been here all along, but Jews have too. For thousands of years. We’re definitely not religious here on the kibbutz, you know that. But we are Jews, and we do intend to finally have our own homeland. Where we don’t have to keep apologizing for merely existing. Where we won’t be exiled or exterminated. If the Arabs can understand that, there’s enough room for all of us.” “And if not?” Judith interjected. “Then we’ll defend our ground. With all available means. We built this land up, working with our hands, hard goddamn work, every day. And we don’t have any intention of giving it all up again. Imagine sending all those refugees back—refugees like you, Judith. No country will take them. Where would they even go? Camps?” For a while, only the ...

Josef looked down at his uniform. He suddenly felt constricted in his khaki cloth with its British decorations and insignia, trapped in someone else’s skin. He’d worn the uniform with pride for many years; now he felt like he was in disguise. His foot searched for the brake, and the jeep skidded to a stop on the side of the road. The red-orange sun was sinking into the Mediterranean. Sentimental kitsch, he thought angrily. He fished the pack of cigarettes from his chest pocket, lit up a Dunhill, and inhaled deeply.

She had brought shame to him, that much was clear. Everyone in the village knew it. What was he supposed to do now? Simply accept it and hope they would forget at some point? What girl would now be prepared to become his wife? The wife of a loser. He weighed the revolver in his hand. Should he lie in wait for Hana somehow, avenge the shame with blood? He twirled the revolver with his finger in the trigger guard. On the other hand, his father had taken the money from old Khalidy, a lot of money. Shouldn’t he be obeying his father’s decision? Even worse than that broken promise of marriage was the fact that she was now entering the Jews’ world for good. The Jews! They wanted more every day. They were building their fortified villages everywhere, spreading out, occupying ancient Arabic land, acting like their new masters. They wanted their own state, with Jerusalem as their capital. Jerusalem, the third-holiest Muslim city. Al-Quds! What madness! God would not allow it. Never!

Moshe Ben Porat, the oldest on the kibbutz at thirty-five, had kept silent until now. “There will be war, no matter what they decide. The Arabs have already declared they won’t accept a partition of Palestine under any condition. So, if we win in New York, they’re not going to accept the result. And if we lose—” He paused a long time. “If we lose, we’re not going to surrender either. That would surely mean we’d go on forever without our own state, a persecuted minority inside Arab Palestine. Or does someone here see things differently?” Judith stared at her fingernails. Violence, she thought, always more violence. Would it ever end? Could her brother possibly be right? Should she just give up and go away, to England, if he could get her in? Or even to America? But hadn’t he himself decided to fight for a Jewish state? Didn’t refugees like her need a place where they belonged? Did the Jews always have to be a people with no right to their own homeland? Oppressed forever?

Higgins grabbed the slim folder and ran in to plant himself before the general. He clicked his heels. “Well?” “Rather lively night, sir.” The general eyed him impatiently. “Details?” Higgins flipped open the folder. “Yesterday, some Arabs, coming from Jaffa Gate, made their way across the Jewish commercial center on the other side of the Old City. Rather disorderly, if you ask me.” McMillan lit a cigarette. “Continue.” “Well, first the Arabs began looting, and then they started fires. There were said to have been British police in the area when it happened.” He cleared his throat. “Some of them were said to have helped tear the bars off shops.” The general’s expression didn’t change. “Rather large fires, heavy smoke, lots of injured. The Haganah boys then fired over the Arabs’ heads. They’re getting more and more brazen that way, practically showing off.” “Then what?” The sergeant glanced at the densely written pages before him. “Then the Jews struck back. Apparently, it was that lot from the Irgun. In any case, they forced their way into an Arab cinema, the Rex, and set it on fire. It’s completely burned down. In addition, there were grenades thrown at cafés, a synagogue set on fire in retaliation, pedestrians stabbed. Some people have even abandoned their apartments, having now found themselves on the wrong side of the partition.” McMillan stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “And the rest of the country?” The sergeant flipped through his documents. “The same picture...

When Lieutenant Goldsmith entered, General McMillan was standing at the window, staring at the barbed wire surrounding the British headquarters. “Just a few months more, Goldsmith. We ruled this place for thirty years, and soon it’ll all be over.” The general turned around. “But until then, we still must maintain order, somehow. Or at least act as if we have done.” He fixed his stare on the lieutenant. “So that we do not misunderstand one another: for me, this is not about those lunatics out there. This is about our boys. We’re sustaining dead or injured nearly every day now. I don’t have the slightest desire to put our soldiers at any more risk, so we’ll keep out of their squabbles as best we can. Beyond that, the orders from London are clear: crack down hard when we’re attacked. Is that understood, Lieutenant?” Josef shifted uneasily. “With all due respect, sir, aren’t the Jews just angry because we usually take the Arabs’ side? And how are they supposed to establish a state when we don’t allow them into the country?” McMillan watched him with cold eyes. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me. Our orders are clear. We’re not to alter our immigration policies. Britain will still have powerful interests in the Middle East after we’ve left this dreadful country. Oil, energy, the Suez Canal. I really don’t need to explain that all to you. We were not for this Jewish state nonsense, and we see no reason to view things any differently now. Besides, are you suggesting we show leniency eve...

Every mile closer to Jerusalem brought memories that Judith resisted. Memories of Uncle Albert, of death, of disillusionment, of her attempt to put an end to her life. But was that fair? she wondered. Didn’t the city also represent compassion and hope for her? What about Nurse Hana and Tamar Schiff? She had lost her uncle, but hadn’t she also found her brother? And why did Jews and Arabs alike have to create so many myths and such outcry over Jerusalem? No one on the kibbutz was very religious, but when it came to the historic capital, not one of them was willing to give it all up. One evening, as they sat around the fire, discussing how much the city meant for the future Jewish state, Moshe had even pulled out the Torah and flipped to Psalm 137:5, where the children of Israel bemoan their suffering in Babylonian captivity: “If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither away”—it was the Zionists’ battle cry. “Here, it says it right here.” Moshe continued quoting: “May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not make Jerusalem my chief joy.” Curious, Judith read the psalm later, and was startled by what followed: “Daughter of Babylon, you destroyer, blessed shall be the one who repays you for what you have done to us! Blessed shall be the one who takes your small children and smashes them against the rocks!” All of this spun through her head as the truck made its way through the Jordan Valley. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth—that’s...

Hana didn’t leave the grand entrance of Hadassah Hospital for a long time. She kept standing right before that six-pointed star set into the marble floor. She’d never thought about it, had never looked at this symbol at all when showing up for work each morning. But she was aware of it now, very aware. It was the Star of David, the Jewish star.

Hana wondered how many of her Arab coworkers were staying home again today. First it had only been two, then more stopped showing up for work every week. Now only a few dared make their way up Mount Scopus. The access roads passed through Arab neighborhoods, and the cars driving from there up the steep hill to Hadassah Hospital kept getting fired upon. The number of Arab patients had severely decreased as well. Hana felt dizzy. She considered how far it was to the nearest toilet. She’d already thrown up once at home. She considered whether to take Nurse Sarah into her confidence but decided against it. So far, she’d kept it a secret from David as well. In the beginning she wasn’t sure, but now she knew for certain. She had gone over the symptoms so many times in her training; she had advised countless Bedouin women when they’d come into the clinic with the same signs. She would never be able to go back now, not to Muslim Deir Yassin. How was she supposed to tell her mother? After all, she was the one who’d always been against her getting trained in the Jewish hospital, who’d always warned her about getting involved in such work. And about having daily contact with Jewish doctors.

after attacks on hospital, many of her arab coworkers were reluctant to come to hospital.

Let me think about it, he wanted to say. I have no idea myself. Right outside, everyone’s attacking each other, the violence deadlier and deadlier, the future more uncertain, and here we are, a Jew and an Arab, in the heart of Jerusalem, and we’re about to be parents. The situation was completely absurd. Could anyone justify bringing a child into this city full of hate? Should he ask Hana if she really wanted that? Instead, he took her in his arms again. “I love you,” he said, and pushed the strands of hair from her face. “We will manage, somehow we will.”

“We’ve received intelligence from their camp in Qantara that they’ll soon be sending more troops across the Syrian border. Here’s what it comes down to: either we hit them as hard as we can, or they hit us. Let’s not fool ourselves—there is no peaceful solution now. It’s high time we showed them they cannot destroy us. Those gangs from the Arab Liberation Army are becoming increasingly aggressive, especially here in Galilee.” Murmurs of agreement. “We are going to drive the gangs out of Deir El Nar and the residents along with them.” “The residents?” Ben asked. “You heard me, drive them right out,” Gutmann answered. “What about the families, the children?” “They go, too, all of them, we have clear orders. Nothing is to be surrendered, not one square foot of land, not one settlement.” Ben spoke up again. “What if they resist?” Gutmann lifted his machine gun. “This will make them get a move on. And none of you better get sentimental. The time for that is over.” He turned to the men standing around him. “Any other questions?” No one spoke.

Ben Zvi came up to the main square, his machine gun slung on his back, and sat on the grass before the firepit. Judith joined him. Ben Zvi stared off into space. “She was staring at me,” he said to himself. “Who?” Judith asked. “The mukhtar’s wife. The one who’d served us tea that time. She was lying there, in a corner of the house, staring right at me as if she could see me.” He swallowed. “She’d been dead awhile.” Judith winced. She remembered the woman well, her dark robe. “They shot her, the people from the Palmach just shot her.” Judith stared at him, her eyes wide. “And the mukhtar? What about the mukhtar?” “They shot him first.” Judith placed a hand on his arm. “My God.” “God has no part in this,” Ben said.

Judith jumped up and went over to the water station. Uri was there, washing his right leg. Judith saw the blood. She felt a sting run through her chest. He’s wounded, she thought. Uri. “It’s nothing, really,” Uri said, seeing her reaction. “We were lucky: only a few wounded, no dead. The Arabs were fighting us like crazy. The liberation army troops had holed up in the village—we literally had to smoke them out. Then they fled, at least those who still could. In any case, Deir El Nar won’t be a threat to us anymore. We’ve taken it.” “And what about the mukhtar? And his wife?” Judith asked, her voice straining. Uri hesitated a moment. “The people from that village were supposed to go, those were our orders. And since they didn’t, the Palmach helped them along. It worked. They’re gone, all of them.” Judith could feel every part of herself resisting. “No,” she said. “We can’t be doing this. Not us, of all people. Jews.” She sank onto a bench. “Tell me how you could do this? How could you? Tell me!” Uri straightened up, at attention. “They attack us, we strike back. We must fight this battle. It’s now or never. It’s our only chance, we must take it.” “But—but fighting back can’t mean killing innocent people, driving them from their homes, taking their land. Uri, we can’t do that, especially not us.” Uri glared at her. “Don’t be so naive. And stop playing the victim. The Holocaust is over, you hear me? When they try to kill us, we have to defend ourselves. You know what their le...

Tamar Schiff stood at the window of her apartment and looked down on the now-deserted street. She’d been unable to sleep so many times in the past few weeks. In the morning, Yossi was going to Tel Aviv for two days, on one of the convoys that was getting hit ever harder by the Arab gangs. She was going to give him a letter for Judith, an invitation to Passover. Tamar just hoped he’d be able to make it home safely. Jerusalem was now experiencing daily shootings and explosions. Just three weeks ago, a bomb had devastated the building housing the Palestine Post. This morning she would go to Chaim Grünbaum’s little shop and try to get a sliver of meat and some milk for the children. She wondered how much more she’d have to pay to get him to make another exception. On his last stay in Tel Aviv, Yossi had scared up a sack of grain. But she was keeping that as a last resort, in case the food supplies turned even worse. Shouldn’t she just go with him, take the children, get on the bus, and leave Jerusalem behind, like so many had recently? Why couldn’t she live in Tel Aviv, on the sea, in a city that was practically all Jews, where things were relatively safe? Of course, the people from the Jewish Agency, just a few hundred yards away on King George V Avenue, would be against that. Jews weren’t allowed to leave Jerusalem, not right now, so soon before the British pulled out. But how could she keep exposing her children to such danger? She sighed. Yossi was against moving too. His ...

Why fight? she thought. For what? For a piece of land? A piece of land that was still half stones and thornbushes even after months of hard work? And was it supposed to just go on like this forever—fighting the Arabs, fighting for survival? Her Hebrew had improved, but she noticed she was still thinking in German. Recently, Moshe had snapped at her for speaking German, a language many kibbutzniks understood better than Hebrew. “Will you stop that?” he’d said. “That’s Hitler’s language.” She’d defended herself without thinking, unleashing her fury for the first time. “Yes, it sure is. I’m well aware. But it’s also the language of my parents and grandparents, and even though you might not like it, of Theodor Herzl. He didn’t know any Hebrew.”

Memories filled her head, memories of warm summer days. It was summer 1932, she was nine, lying blissfully next to her mother on the beach beside Lake Wannsee in Berlin. That last carefree summer. It surprised her to be recalling this of all things. She wondered what Berlin looked like now. Was it all just rubble everywhere, or did something like normal life exist? Was her building in Dahlem still standing? Who lived there? Would she ever see it again? She stopped herself. Was she homesick for Germany? For her language, her culture, her roots? She tried to switch off her mind, but another thought crept in, slowly blanketing all the old images. For days now, she kept catching herself asking the same question: What was he doing right now? Was he in danger? Sometimes she felt ashamed when she passed the graves of Yael and the others. But she couldn’t stop. She kept thinking about him. Uri.

Uri Rabinovich. He was standing before her, alone. He clearly hadn’t shaved in days. His face looked tired, only his eyes lively. “I just wanted to tell you goodbye.” Judith stared in surprise. “Say goodbye? But you only just got here.” “We’re pulling out of the villages. We’re looking for volunteers,” he explained. “All of Jerusalem is at stake. The Arabs are systematically sealing off the city. If we don’t break their siege, they’ll starve out some hundred thousand Jews. Then the city will fall. And you know what that means: a Jewish state without Jerusalem—it’s unthinkable.” Judith rose from her rock and stood up. Only a few inches separated them. She could feel his physical presence, and she instinctively wanted to press up close to him, to hold him tight. “I need to go,” Uri said. Judith hesitated. “Are you looking for more volunteers?” she said finally. “Are you taking women too?” “We’re taking any volunteers who are truly prepared to use a weapon when it comes down to it. It will be tough, really tough. The roads into Jerusalem are now the main battle zone.” Judith understood. They were looking for fighters, not angels of peace. No one plagued by scruples. No one afraid of killing. No one, she realized, like her.

“The day of decision has come. Fight for Al-Quds, the city of the Prophet Mohammed. You are the Jihad Muqaddas, the muftis’ warriors. Allahu Akbar!”

You did everything you could.” But Uri kept sobbing. She stroked his hair. She only now realized how hard he was taking the convoy fiasco. They had seven dead to mourn and twenty-two injured and had lost fifteen trucks and two armored cars. And even worse: the road to Jerusalem was still impassible. He wasn’t responsible for the Arab raid. There were simply more of the attackers, and the Haganah, seeing no other way to get supplies into Jerusalem, had knowingly taken the risk. Yet he still blamed himself.

The question resounded again in her head. What did she want in Jerusalem? Such a straightforward question and yet so complicated. There was a very simple answer. She needed to see Uri, even if she’d never tell Weinberger that. But her reason went beyond her feelings for Uri. The closer the Piper Cub got to Jerusalem, the clearer it became: there was no going back to her previous life. She had left Berlin behind. She had left Dachau behind, and that British camp on Cyprus. She had left Judith Wertheimer behind. She would, once the new Jewish state was founded, need a new name. Her Hebrew name.

“Here, from your parents’ home,” he said, and handed Youssef the book. “They are dead. Your oldest sister too.” He sobbed. “Just like—my mother.” Youssef took the Koran and pressed it to his chest. He had sworn to the Almighty that he’d take vengeance, and on his life and the honor of his mother, he would keep his word. “Where are the others?” he asked Ahmed. “Gone, long gone. They headed for the Jordan River, to cross over into Transjordan.” Hatred shot through Youssef like a bolt of lightning. By taking Deir Yassin, the Jews had achieved their goal: panicked Arabs were leaving their villages by the thousands. The

Yet he, too, felt the tension rising inside him. They had carefully selected the target. They would deal the Jews a massive blow, along with all those who believed in understanding between Jews and Arabs. There was no better target than the staff of Hadassah Hospital. Dreamers and fantasists, all of them, he thought. How much more proof did they need to understand it? What more had to happen for it to be clear to everyone that Jews and Arabs could never, ever coexist equally. Not in Palestine. Not in Jerusalem. He

“Good of you to come. All hell’s broken loose. People from the Jewish Agency calling every few minutes. They want us to intervene. And our boys at the Antonius House are constantly on the wireless, wanting to know what they’re to do. The Arabs are firing on that Jewish convoy heading to Hadassah with all they have. There’s more and more of them, coming in from everywhere. The general does not wish to intervene. He feels that everything will calm down again soon.” Josef stared at him in disbelief. “He does not wish to intervene? That means we simply watch while those people out there are massacred?” “Looks that way, sir.” “I have to speak with him.” Josef straightened up, smoothed out his uniform, and knocked on the door to the general’s office. He didn’t wait for the reply, just stormed in. McMillan looked up from his files. “Didn’t the sergeant tell you I don’t wish to be disturbed, Goldsmith? You do understand I have a withdrawal to coordinate?” He gave Josef an impatient stare. “Anything else, Goldsmith?” “With all due respect, General, sir, you cannot be serious. There’s a massacre taking place, literally before our eyes, and we’re just letting it happen. As the mandate power, we have a responsibility to maintain order, which means for as long as we are still here.” McMillan looked at his files again. “You know something, Goldsmith? They fired at me this morning. The Jews could think of nothing better than to open fire on me as my car happened to pass by that convoy. T...

From his observation post inside the Antonius House on the other side of the street, a sergeant in the Highland Light Infantry grabbed the microphone of his radio set. “The situation here is getting rather out of control. Request instructions.” A crackling voice replied: “Continue observing, over.”

“Ugh, the water pipes don’t have any pressure. Either the Arabs have detonated the pipes up in the mountains again or the company doesn’t have oil for the pumps. Hopefully the water comes back soon,” she told Judith. “Just imagine, now they’re giving courses on cooking without electricity or kerosene, and on how to build wood stoves for cooking outside. How can we go on like this?” She withdrew back into the kitchen. Her husband, Yossi, who had kept silent so far, turned to his son. “Listen, Shimon. This afternoon, the truck with the big water tank is coming, you know the one. I’ll be heading down with the can to get us some. And you get to come along, down to the front door, to help me carry it upstairs. But don’t spill any, promise?” Shimon beamed. “Yes, Abba, promise. Does that mean I have to start brushing my teeth again?” “Yes, you’ll get to brush your teeth again.” Yossi tried a smile.

“Who’s in charge here?” asked the major. His gaze landed on Uri, who was standing next to the jeep with one hand propped next to the holster on his belt. “You there, let’s not get any foolish ideas,” the major said. “Come over here, and be quick about it. I have neither the time nor the desire for any discussion. On order of British headquarters, I advise you of the following: the district of Sheikh Jarrah is to be cleared of all Haganah at once. We’ve given the Haganah a six-hour ultimatum. Five hours have already passed. You have one hour to withdraw your people. Do you understand me?” Uri kept his hand on his holster. “Evidently I haven’t made myself clear,” said the major. “If you’re thinking of putting up resistance, you best take a good look around. We have armored support positioned everywhere, as well as sufficient mortars. And believe me, we will use them.” Uri flushed red with anger. “So where were you when they were massacring the passengers of that convoy, right next door to here? Where was your armored support then, where were your troops?” The major’s voice turned colder. “Don’t get smart with me. I’ve told you what our orders are, and we will implement them.” He pointed at the armored vehicles behind him. “This street through Sheikh Jarrah holds strategic importance for us, so you’d damn-well better believe we’re going to protect it. What you do with this neighborhood after we withdraw makes no difference to me.” He turned to Hana and her father. “You’re Ara...

She had tried to get her apartment back in order after it was ransacked by Jewish intruders, but her father had stopped her. It’s pointless, he kept saying, pointless, pointless. She tried not to think about it, tried not to keep having the same thoughts. They would have to decide, soon. Her father pressured her about it every day. The more she considered it, the more she found that there wasn’t much to deliberate, not with David dead. He had been her bridge to another world, to their world, the Jews’ world. But this bridge had been burned just as he had been burned to death in that bus. What options did she have left? Live here, alone? Or with her father, who didn’t even wish to live anymore? Deir Yassin belonged to the Jews now. Her mother was dead as well, murdered. What had once been her home village was now inaccessible even though it only lay a few miles to the west. Her father was right. It was pointless. Hana stood up and went into the kitchen. She pulled out the sharp carving knife and went back to her bed. Gently, as if probing, she ran the sharp blade across the veins of her left arm. Judith had attempted it, and she hadn’t succeeded. But Hana was a nurse. She knew what she needed to do to truly make the cut deadly. She pressed the blade harder to her lower arm, making a small incision. Suddenly she stopped. She thought she felt a slight movement in her abdomen. She caught her breath. Again she felt something moving. It had moved, her baby had moved.

Hana took the baby over to the car and showed her father. “She’ll die if we don’t do something soon. We have to take her with us.” She pointed at the old woman. “And the grandmother too.” The younger woman raised her hands and released a sharp cry. Hana turned to her. “We don’t want to take your baby from you. But we can’t simply let her die.” The woman lowered her head in silence. Hana searched her bag for a pencil and wrote on a scrap of newspaper from the car. “This is our address in Amman. You can find them both there.” The woman took the page and looked at Hana with embarrassment. “I cannot read,” she said. “No one in our family can.” Hana read the address to her several times, asking her to repeat it back. “And if you forget, you must find someone who can read it,” Hana said. “You will have to.” She gestured to the old woman. “Come on, we’ll move you together. Let us help.” The old woman tried to get up but slumped back down again. “I can’t,” she said, her voice breaking. Ali climbed out of the car and pulled her up using both arms. She hobbled, supported by Ali, over to the Chrysler, and slid onto the rear seat without a word. After assuring the terrified mother once more, Hana, baby Sulima in her arms, got in next to the grandmother and pulled the car door shut with difficulty. Hana cradled Sulima tight. She gently pressed the child to her belly and hoped that her own baby could feel it. It would be like this soon, when her own child was born, when she could cradle...

The old woman’s head had slid down onto Hana’s shoulder. Acting on an uneasy feeling, Hana grabbed the old woman’s hand and tried to feel for her pulse. “Stop, Ali. Stop right now,” she moaned. Her father turned to her. “She’s dead,” Hana said. Hana couldn’t stop trembling. Was this their future too? Only more death, more ruin? Maybe she should’ve taken that knife to her arm after all. She placed a hand on her belly while cradling Sulima in her other arm, the baby starting to cry. No, she wanted to live, she had to live, for this little life inside her, and perhaps for this one she held. No matter what the future might bring. “I will be there for you,” she whispered. “For you, my little one. You can depend on me.”

Jonathan Higgins tossed a file into the overfull wooden crate next to his desk. “So, that’s that,” the sergeant said. “Thirty-one years and now it’s closing time. Our good General Allenby surely couldn’t have imagined this when he reported to Jerusalem back in 1917.” He slammed the crate shut. It was the last of so many he’d filled in the past few days. The British Mandate government had thoroughly prepared for withdrawal. Over two hundred thousand tons of material had been packed up and readied for delivery back home. The British were saying goodbye to yet another part of their shrinking empire. “Hard to believe we’re heading home, out of bloody Palestine, away from these nervy Arabs, these impertinent Jews, out of this place, back to good old Britain. Wonder if anyone will thank us? We brought civilization to this godforsaken desert, paved roads, real governance. And now? Now they’re all happy we’re finally clearing out. God save the King.” He turned to Lieutenant Goldsmith, sitting in his chair behind the empty desk. “I’ve requested my discharge. It’ll do for a little house in the country. Perhaps I’ll even start playing a little golf.” He cleared his throat. “What about you, sir, if you don’t mind my asking? The big careers are now being made in Germany, what with the Commies causing loads of trouble in Berlin. The ‘Cold War,’ they’re calling it.”

Josef picked up the receiver of the phone on the empty desk, anxiously testing whether it still worked. The usual tone sounded in his ear. He quickly dialed a number. “Tomorrow morning at seven,” he said softly when a voice answered in Hebrew. “Be quick, but don’t make trouble. The withdrawal itself must proceed without a hitch.” Josef rested his face in his hands. The time had come—he finally had to decide. He took a deep breath. He owed the British for taking him in as a child, and he had attempted to pay them back. He’d worn their uniform for years. He had risked his life for them in the war. The red beret of his airborne division lay on the desk in front of him. He’d always been proud of that beret. But he felt something inside him, something stronger than that loyalty. And tomorrow he would have to show it. Josef knew there was no turning back.

The first time I was in Israel, I noticed something immediately: on the edge of the narrow road to Jerusalem there still stood, so many years later, the wrecks of armored trucks. They remain there today, silent witnesses to how desperate the struggle for the Holy City of three religions was in 1948, how narrowly the Jews had escaped losing their capital. Those wrecks got me curious. I wanted to know their story. I returned again and again, including in October 1973, when the armies of Egypt and Syria invaded the country during the Yom Kippur War. I experienced firsthand how close the Jewish state was to military defeat, especially in the north, and yet was still able to emerge victorious. It’s this pattern that shapes the history of Israel: repeatedly being attacked, repeatedly reacting to the threat of being driven into the sea by the Arabs, and repeatedly triumphing. Even the founding of Israel itself began with a war. This was the direct consequence of the 1947 United Nations decision that divided the British Mandate between Jews and Arabs.

The Jews insisted on finally getting their own homeland—on claiming, once and for all, the biblical land of their forefathers. Encouraged by the (later broken) promises of the British Mandate authority and morally strengthened in their claim by the Holocaust before a world audience, they set out early on to acquire land in Palestine. This was soon reflected in the number of inhabitants: in the early 1920s, Palestine had been home to around six hundred thousand Arabs and eighty thousand Jews. By the 1940s, the number of Arab inhabitants had doubled, and the Jews did everything in their power to increase their population through new waves of immigration, both legal and illegal. After the founding of the State of Israel, some 750,000 Arabs left the conquered area and the number of Jews reached 650,000—in other words, a massive population shift had taken place. No wonder the Israelis called the struggle for control in what was then Palestine a “war of independence,” while the Arabs called it the Nakba, the “catastrophe”—one that continues for Palestinians to this day.

Nothing remains more controversial, however, than the question of who is at fault. For a long time, it was part of the myth surrounding the founding of the state that the vast majority of Arabs left the ancestral land voluntarily during the war—driven by the promises by Arab leaders that they could return to their homes after a few weeks once the Jews were beaten back. No Palestinian ever voluntarily handed their home to the Israelis, of course. But it took more than forty years for Israeli and Palestinian historians, some working together, to begin painting a more realistic picture. They came to the conclusion that a mixture of fear, propaganda about atrocities, false promises, and forceful expulsions triggered the exodus that’s still at the core of the unresolved Palestinian question in the Middle East today. Both sides used all means possible to achieve their goals: the Zionists, under the determined leadership of...

This book is a novel. It doesn’t attempt to take sides, but rather portrays the human face of this historic drama—in all its many facets. The main characters in this novel are fictional. Kibbutz Yardenim and the Arab village of Deir El Nar aren’t found on any map. And yet the story occurs within a concrete historical framework: it leads up to the two major massacres in the battle for Jerusalem—the attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassin outside the city gates and the attack on the doctors and nurses of Hadassah Hospital. These were the two most shocking massacres the world saw in this bloody struggle; they were certainly not the only ones. Brutal murders, rapes, looting, terrorist attacks on innocent people—they too were part of this war.

The peace activist Uri Avnery experienced that period as an Israeli soldier and impressively describes his experiences in his extremely readable book 1948: A Soldier’s Tale; The Bloody Road to Jerusalem. Dov Yosef, the military governor of Jerusalem appointed by Ben Gurion, gives the most comprehensive insight into the tense situation of a city cut off from all supplies in his account, The Faithful City: The Siege of Jerusalem, 1948, doing so with facts and figures and in the sober manner of his actual profession, as a lawyer. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, is a joint work by British, Israeli, and Palestinian historians published by Cambridge University Press that I found as helpful for understanding the conflict as I did Tom Segev’s One Palestine, Complete. The memoirs of Golda Meir, My Life, and Abba Eban, My Country, describe the critical years of 1947–48 from the perspective of those directly involved in shaping them. On the journalistic side, O Jerusalem!, by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, counts as a classic among the numerous other works about the struggle for the Holy City—they complement the other well-known sources with their own gripping and comprehensive research. The internet has become an indispensable source as well these days. More and more Palestinians are speaking out there, telling their stories, as are British soldiers, with their accounts of active duty in Palestine. The British Record on Partition, published by The Nation...

activities of German Wehrmacht and SS members, either involved in fighting or serving as instructors on the Arab side, are documented by a number of sources and show that, after the Holocaust, these people had no qualms about...