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

by Sandy Tolan

  The 1958 demonstration was recalled by Avraham Shmil, the retired director of the Ramla office of the Histadrut labor federation. Shmil also described the living conditions for many mizrahi Jews, their frustrations in finding jobs, the tensions with Ashkenazi Jews, and the pressure he applied on Israel's labor secretary. The virtual taboo on mizrahis' listening to classical Arabic music was discussed by Israeli musicologist Yoav Kutner in an interview.

  The "BOULDER-STREWN" quote from the JNF comes from an advertisement in the Israel Year Book of 1950, p. 463.

  The destruction of the Arab villages is documented from multiple sources. As this may be less familiar to Western readers, documentation here is especially rigorous, starting with Meron Benvenisti's extensive section in Sacred Landscapes, pp. 165-67. Another key source is Aharon Shai of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose research in the archives of the Israel Archeological Survey Society documents an extensive program conducted in conjunction with the Israel Lands Administration to demolish abandoned Arab villages. Shai's article "The Fate of Abandoned Arab Villages in Israel on the Eve of the Six-Day War and Its Immediate Aftermath," appeared in Katedra, no. 105, September 2002, published by Yad Ben Zvi, an Israeli think tank named after the country's second president. Shai's article describes how the Archeological Society "was for all practical purposes employed by the ILA in its efforts to clear the country of deserted villages. Its officials surveyed the villages intended for destruction. . . . Most of the abandoned Arab villages inhabited until 1948 and abandoned in the course of the War of Independence . . . disappeared] . . . as a result of a clear and well-designed plan originating with the ILA." (An English-language abstract of the article is available at http://www.ybz. org.il/?ArticleID=372.)

  Other sources include Sharif Kanaana, "The Eradication of the Arab Character of Palestine and the Process of Judaization That Accompanied It," as cited by Benvenisti, (Sacred Landscapes, p. 263). Also see Morris (1948 and After, p. 122), who quotes Yosef Weitz ordering two settlement officials "to determine in which villages we will be able to settle our people, and which should be destroyed." One of those officials, Asher Bobritzky, would later report (Morris, p. 125) "orders" to accelerate the destruction of the villages. Segev quotes Aharon Cizling, a cabinet minister, describing "an order to destroy forty villages." On "bombing" of villages, see Benvenisti, p. 162; for "tractors," see Morris, 1948 and After, p. 123; reference to "bulldozers" and army demolition crews comes from my telephone interview with Shlomo Shaked of Kibbutz Gezer based on his eyewitness account. See also Haaretz, April 4, 1967, which quotes Moshe Dayan as saying, "There is not a single Jewish village in the country that has not been built on the site of an Arab village."

  The Sabra discussion comes largely from Oz Almog's Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew and from interviews with Moshe Melamed and former Knesset member Victor Shemtov. The definition of tz-abar and the "elect son" quote are Almog, p. 104. See also Amos Elon's The Israelis, pp. 227-28. The serialized novel by Moshe Shamir was recalled by Shemtov, at the time an editor of a Bulgarian-language newspaper in Israel that was tied to the leftist Zionist Mapam Party. Shemtov's "wash off that old Jew" quote comes from an interviews, in his Jerusalem home in June 2004. The Sabra "uniform" was recalled in numerous interviews, including with Melamed, and is mentioned in Sabra, p. 212; additional details can be seen in the permanent exhibit of the Museum of Ramla.

  The shame of the Holocaust vis-a-vis Sabra identity is also discussed by Shemtov and in Yablonka's Survivors of the Holocaust. The "difficult human matter" quote is in Yablonka, p. 65; Ben-Gurion's "human dust" remark comes from Almog, p. 87; the "pathetic and helpless people" quote is in Yablonka, pp. 30-31. The attitudes of some Ashkenazi leaders toward some mizrahi is well documented by Segev in 1949, especially pp. 155-94.

  The immigrant labels ("yeke" and so on) were recalled by several longtime Ramla residents, including Esther Pardo, Yona Sirius, Labib Qulana, and Ya'acov Flaran, in interviews, and by Moshe Melamed in correspondence with me.

  The disappearance of the tent camps by the mid-1960s was confirmed in the interview with Shmil; Ramla's gritty reputation of the day was recalled by Ramla-born Israeli actor Moni Moshonov and Israeli musicologist Yoav Kutner.

  The campaign of the Israeli Lands Administration and the quote from Eshkol are from Benvenisti, Sacred Landscapes, pp. 167-68. The position of Nasser in the mid 1960s is described by Heikal (Secret Channels, pp. 122-26) and Sayigh (Armed Struggle and the Search for State, pp. 132-42), who also describes (pp. 132-37) the role of the PLO and the ANM.

  The seeming inevitability of war was recalled by Dalia and during various interviews with the Khairi family.

  Chapter 8

  This chapter is based on personal and historical accounts of the 1967 war between Israel and the Arab states, known in the West mainly as the Six Day War. Family recollections were gathered in multiple interviews with Dalia and with Bashir, Nuha, and Ghiath Khairi. Historical accounts from 1967, and the years leading up to the war, come from a wide range of perspectives: from the Israeli military point of view, Chaim Herzog's The Arab-Lsraeli Wars; from an analysis of Israeli politics, based on minutes of cabinet meetings and other original documents, Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World; from an Egyptian perspective, Secret Channels: The Inside Story of the Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations, by Mohamed Heikal, who was a key aide to Gamal Abdel Nasser; from a Jordanian military and political perspective, Samir Mutawi:'s Jordan in the 1967 War, which is based largely on interviews with key players in Jordan, including King Hussein; from a broad political analysis of the war and how it affected the Palestinian liberation movement, Yezid Sayigh's Armed Struggle and the Search for State.

  Key portions of the narrative describing the buildup to war rely on declassified U.S. documents from November 1966 to June 1967. These documents, which include minutes of cabinet meetings, CIA intelligence advisories, and telegrams between Israeli, Jordanian, and Egyptian leaders and American officials, are housed at the LBJ Library at the University of Texas at Austin. Many of the documents have been assembled in volumes XVIII and XIX of the Foreign Relations of the United States 1964-1968, which are housed at the library and also available online at http://vvrww.state.gOv/r/pa/ho/frus/ johnsonlb/xix/ and http.7/www.state.gov/wwvv7about_state/history/vol_xviii/index johnsonlb/xix/ and http.7/www.state.gov/wwvv7about_state/history/vol_xviii/index.html (hereinafter FRUS Vol. XVIII or XIX). For an additional analysis of these events, which draws on many of the same documents, see Stephen Green's Taking Sides, pp. 195-211.

  The departure of Ramallah Christians, which followed an earlier wave of immigration to the United States that began well before the 1948 war, is confirmed by Palestinian scholar Naseer Aruri. The Ramallah diaspora is nowr so vast that the list of Ramallah families in the United States alone is contained in a published directory of 237 pages. The description of the political position of the "host" governments, UNRWA, and the refugees is based on years of interviews with refugees and other Palestinian and Israeli analysts. Bashir's political views in 1967 were in line with those of many Palestinians (see Sayigh, pp. 95-154, for his analysis of the development of Palestinian factions prior to the war).

  For more on Nasser as a hero of the Arab masses, see Heikal, pp. 100-38, and Bassam Abu-Sharif, in Best of Enemies. Reference to the nonaligned movement is in Heikal, pp. 108-10, and its relationship to the Palestinians is in Sayigh, p. 312, p. 332, and p. 690.

  The Palestinian urgency to confront Israel is documented in Sayigh, p. 122 and p. 124. Indeed, at its secret plant in the Negev desert at Dimona, Israel was developing such weapons, though this would not become an "official secret" for years. See Oren, in Six Days of War, pp. 75-76, and Stephen Green, Taking Sides, p. 152, for more on Israel's nuclear development and Arab reaction to it. Oren, on p. 120, writes of an Egyptian overflight of the secret nuclear project at Dimona, and on pp. 75-76, he cites Nasser's 1964 remark that if Israel began developing nuclear weapons capabilities, it "wou
ld be a cause for war, no matter how suicidal." Nasser did not repeat this threat, nor did he ever cite Dimona "as a motive for his decisions in May," but Oren argues that Israeli fear of an Egyptian attack on Dimona was a major catalyst for war. Morris, in Righteous Victims, p. 307, concurs: "The Egyptian command on May 24-25 briefly considered and planned a preemptive air offensive against Israeli targets—including the Dimona nuclear plant. . . . Nasser countermanded the order on May 26. . . ."

  Discussion of Habash, the ANM, and Nasser is in Sayigh, pp. 71-80. Habash's experience in Lydda in 1948 comes from "Taking Stock: An Interview with George Habash," Journal of'Palestine Studies 28, 1 (Autumn 1998): 86-101, and Sayigh, p. 71.

  Nasser's stance on Palestine is documented by Sayigh, p. 78 and p. 131, and by Hirst in The Gun and the Olive Branch, p. 401, who quotes from Nasser's speech to the Palestine National Council in June 1965: "If we are today not ready for defense, how can we talk about an offensive?"

  The "special forces" training came from an interview with Bassam Abu-Sharif, former member of Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and coauthor of Best of Enemies. Additional details were provided in an interview with another former PFLP member no longer living in the Middle East.

  The emergence of Fatah and of Arafat and Abu Jihad is discussed in Sayigh, pp. 8087 and pp. 119-23. The New Year's 1965 operation is described in Michael Oren's Six Days of War as a "fiasco" (p. 1); and by Sayigh (p. 107) as a "lacklustre start"; nevertheless, Sayigh writes, "New Year's Day 1965 was subsequently to be celebrated by all Palestinian organizations as the launch of the armed struggle."

  Tensions over water as part of the buildup to war and Arab discussions around diversion are described by Heikal (p. 121), Oren (p. 23), Herzog (p. 147), Shlaim, p. 232), and my own series, Troubled Waters, for NPR in 1997. For a more detailed analysis of the issue, see this case study prepared by American University's Inventory of Conflict & Environment: www.american.edu/projects/mandala/TED/ice/JORDAN.HTM.

  Fatah's attacks are described by Sayigh on pp. 119-22, which indicates that most Fatah targets were military and industrial, and that Israeli casualties during this period were low. This is corroborated by a timeline from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA / Facts+About+Israel /Israel+in+Maps /1948-1967-+Maj or+Terror+Attacks.htm). Several of the Israeli casualties were due to explosions when Israeli vehicles drove over land mines planted by Palestinian guerrillas. The Samu raid of November 13, 1966, is described by Oren (pp. 34-35), Sayigh (p. 138), and Shlaim (p. 233), who writes, "Inside Jordan the effects of the raid were highly destabilizing." The death toll of twenty-one soldiers comes from Sayigh; Oren mentions fifteen and Shlaim "dozens."

  Verification of the U.S. condemnation of the Samu raid is contained in a November 13, 1966 State Department telegram to the American Embassy in Tel Aviv (Foreign Relations of the United States 1964-1968, Volume XVIII Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1964-67, ([hereinafter FRUS Vol. XVIII, document number 332, online at http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/vol_xviii/index.html]). The Rostow "out of proportion" memo to LBJ is at the same location, document 333. LBJ's November 23 telegram to King Hussein in the LBJ Library archives, "National Security File, Mideast Crisis, NSC History," Vol. 1, Tab 10. The CIA "Special Memorandum" is in FRUS Vol. XVIII, document 338.

  The political fallout from Samu is described by Sayigh on pp. 140-42; Heikal (p. 125) reports that "many Palestinians called for immediate war against Israel." The crackdown in Jordan is described by Mutawi (Jordan in the 1967 War) on p. 80 and by Sayigh on p. 139; Sayigh refers to "hundreds" of Fatah members in Jordanian prisons in the early part of 1967. The unrest in Jordan and U.S. military aid are mentioned by Herzog on p. 147. Mutawi quotes the "imperialist agent" and "ally of Zionism" remarks on p. 83.

  April 1967 tensions in the Golan Heights are described in Herzog (pp. 147-48) and Oren (p. 46), and the dogfight is described by Shlaim (pp. 234-36) and Mutawi (p. 85). Shlaim, the Israeli history professor at Oxford, argues that contrary to popular belief in Israel, "many of the firefights" in the DMZ "were deliberately provoked by Israel." Moshe Dayan, in an interview published posthumously in Ma'ariv, described how many of the clashes were provoked by Israel (see Shlaim, pp. 235-36).

  Nasser's embarrassment over the Israeli victorious dogfight over Syria is indicated by Herzog, p. 148, and Mutawi, p. 85. The response by King Hussein and the Jordan Radio comments are in Mutawi, pp. 85-86. Rabin's threats to topple the Syrian regime came on May 11 or 12 (Shlaim, p. 236; Hirst, p. 342). This was a significant incident in ratcheting up Arab fears. According to Charles W. Yost, former U.S. ambassador to Syria, "Israeli public statement between May 11 and 13 . . . may well have been the spark that ignited the long accumulating tinder" (Foreign Affairs, January 1968, p. 310). That the closure of the Straits of Tiran would be considered an act of war is made clear by Herzog (p. 147), who fought in the war on the Israeli side. The closure represented more of a political threat and a matter of sovereignty, than an economic peril for Israel: The vast majority of Israel's sea trade was conducted through its Mediterranean ports, not from Eilat in the south.

  Whether or not Nasser wanted war in 1967 remains a contentious dispute among historians. Nasser's public statements sent a bellicose message to Israel and the world, much like his decision to close the Straits of Tiran (Mutawi, p. 95), but as Shlaim writes in The Iron Wall, p. 237, "There is general agreement among commentators that Nasser neither wanted nor planned to go to war with Israel. What he did was to embark on an exercise in brinkmanship that was to carry him over the brink." Yost, in his 1968 Foreign Affairs article, wrote that "there is no evidence—quite the contrary—that either Nasser or the Israeli Government . . . wanted and sought a war at this juncture." In a May 12, 1967 background briefing, according to Hirst (p. 343), Aharon Yariv, director of Israeli military intelligence, told reporters, "I would say that as long as there is not an Israeli invasion into Syria extended in area and time, I think the Egyptians will not come in seriously . . . they will do so only if there is no other alternative. And to my eyes no alternative means that we are creating such a situation that it is impossible for the Egyptians not to act because the strain on their prestige will be unbearable."

  The specific numbers of troops massing near the common border at the edge of the Sinai Peninsula is also contentious. Herzog (TheArab-Israeli Wars, p. 149 and p. 154) and Oren (p. 63, citing IDF intelligence) suggest close to one hundred thousand Egyptian troops were in Sinai. Israeli general Matitiahu Peled later indicated that the troop concentrations were lower than the figures Herzog and Oren used (Hirst, p. 337).

  U.S. officials were also highly skeptical of the one hundred thousand figure. Perhaps most compelling on this point, and generally regarding U.S. diplomatic activity in May and June 1967, and military capabilities of Middle Eastern nations, are the exchange found in documents in the LBJ Library, many of which are housed in FRUS Vol. XIX (available online at http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/ history/vol_xviii/index.html). The May 26 CIA memo is in that collection, document 79. Battle's "slightly insane quote" comes from a summary of a May 24 National Security Council meeting, FRUS Vol. XIX, document 54. The U.S. estimates of fifty thousand Egyptian troops, repeated in at least two separate CIA memoranda: May 25, FRUS Vol. XIX, document 61; and May 26, "Military Capabilities of Israel and the Arab States," from "National Security File-Country File, Middle East Crisis, CIA Intelligence Memoranda," Folder 3, from which the analysis of Israel's "political gambit" also comes. Rostow's characterization of Israel's estimates of one hundred thousand Egyptian troops as "highly disturbing" come from his May 25 "memorandum for the President," from "National Security File, Mideast Crisis NSC History," Vol. 1, Tab 42, document 32. The CIA assessment of Israel's abilities to fight and/or defend various fronts comes from a May 23 memorandum (FRUS Vol. XIX, document 44). Yet another CIA memorandum, on May 26, assessed the "lack of cohesiveness on the Arab side" and the depletion of Nasser's forces by thirty-five thous
and troops ("Military Capabilities of Israel and the Arab States," "National Security File-Country File, Middle East Crisis, CIA Intelligence Memoranda," Folder 3). The conversation between Abba Eban, McNamara, and LBJ, including McNamara's telling Eban of the conclusions of "three separate intelligence groups" that the Egyptian Sinai deployments were defensive, and LBJ's "whip the hell out of them" quote, is summarized in the May 26 "Memorandum of Conversation" (FRUS Vol. XIX, document 77). The Katzenbach "mop up the Arabs" quote comes from his oral history interview for the LBJ Library (interview number 3, December 11, 1968). For additional background on Eban's trip to Washington, see Heikal (p. 127), Green (pp. 198-204), and Shlaim (pp. 239240).