A Street Divided by Dion Nissenbaum Read Free Book Online

disputes weren’t all that unusual at the time. UN records from that era are filled with files upon files about stolen mules, missing cows and “imposter” sheep. Diplomats assigned to Jerusalem routinely found themselves mediating feuds over livestock. Journalists in Jerusalem could only take them so seriously. “Jordan Yields Wrong Sheep,” read one headline on a short story in the February 11, 1958, edition of the Jerusalem Post.
    â€œMandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem became a sheepfold yesterday morning when the Jordanian authorities herded 30 sheep into no-man’s-land for return to Israel,” the reporter wrote. The sheep were finding their way back through Mandelbaum Gate, the central link between Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem and Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem. 16
    The handover seemed to be going along well, until the Israelis inspecting the returnees discovered that most of the sheep weren’t theirs. They were, the article reported, “imposters.” The sheep were turned back by Israel to Jordanian officials who vowed to track down the real sheep. 17
    Crossing the border was impossible for most people. Mandelbaum Gate was used mostly by UN officials, diplomats, merchants and few others. Little about it was inviting. The 50-yard crossing was dominated by the remnants of a two-story stone home owned by a Jewish immigrant named Simcha Mandelbaum. The only piece of the house to survive the 1948 war was part of a wall with an elegant stone arch that rose above a No Man’s Land cluttered with rusting armored personnel carriers, coils of barbed wire and lines of conical, concrete anti-tank barriers known as Dragon’s Teeth.
    At Christmas, busloads of Christians on the Israeli side were allowed through the gate into Jordan so they could visit the biblical birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem, just down the road from Jerusalem. Occasionally, Israel and Jordan used the gate to hand over mischievous boys caught exploring No Man’s Land.
    The No Man’s Land at Mandelbaum Gate served as an unusual backdrop for engagements and weddings between brides living on one side of the border and grooms living on the other. Israel and Jordan agreed to hold their fire so some couples, separated by the border, could get engaged amid the tangles of barbed wire and Dragon’s Teeth. 18 They looked on as the families raised toasts to newlyweds married in No Man’s Land. 19
    In 1958, Raphael Israeli, then a 24-year-old Israeli army captain, was chosen to be a delegate on the Jordan-Israel MAC. His youth and inexperience meant that Israeli came to the job with distinct disadvantages, so the ambitious Israeli officer did all he could to even the scales. Israeli, who was born in Morocco and left when he was 14, used his knowledge of Arabic to establish a decent rapport with the Jordanian delegation led by Col. Mohammad Daoud Al-Abbasi, a deft debater who would go on to become his country’s prime minister. The two officers got so close that Abbasi, nearly 20 years older than Israeli, quietly gave his Israeli counterpart a present at the UN commission office in No Man’s Land when one of Israeli’s kids was born.
    â€œDon’t tell anybody,” Abbasi told Israeli as he handed him the gift, “because if anybody knows I brought a present to a Jew, to a Zionist, they will hang me.”
    One of the biggest tests for the two came in 1962 when Israeli got an urgent call in the middle of the night telling him to get dressed and come to the UN office in No Man’s Land right away to meet Abbasi.
    â€œWhat’s happened?” Israeli asked, fearing the worst.
    â€œJust come,” the UN official told Israeli.
    When Israeli got there, Abbasi was in a panic.
    â€œRafi,” the Jordanian officer said, “you have to help me. We have a problem.”
    The crisis wasn’t over a deadly shooting or a child missing in No Man’s Land. It was over a runaway