City of Oranges

by Adam LeBor

  The mayor of Tulkarm informed the Jordanian border police that a family of four children was crossing into Israel, together with two women. Salim had a letter informing the Jordanians who they were. The Jordanians had no objection, but the Israelis were a different matter. The children would not be allowed to stay if they were caught. Wedad continues: ‘We followed the peasant woman, walking until we got into Israel. I was very young but I could feel we were doing something illegal. Once we arrived in Tayibe we went straight to my father’s friend’s house. But Tayibe was a small village and we were immediately spotted as strangers – and there were informers everywhere.’

  The peasant woman, wilier than the children, had disappeared immediately. Tayibe was a sensitive border area, under strict military rule. Palestinian infiltrators regularly crossed into Israel, many of whom were farmers or refugees. Several dozen villages were situated in Jordanian territory whose fields were now part of Israel. Farmers crossed back and forth when they could, to tend and even harvest their crops. After 1948, refugees made repeated attempts to return home if their village was still standing, or to salvage what they could if it had been demolished. The new borders made little sense to those whose families had lived there for many decades. Palestinian fighters also crossed into Israel to carry out sabotage missions. The Israeli police, doubtless alerted by an informer, arrived quickly. They found Wedad playing outside the mayor’s house. They asked her where her aunt was and soon found Fahima. The whole family was taken to the police station, says Wedad, where Fahima tried to bluff her way out of the situation. ‘She played the fool. She pretended she did not know we had crossed into Israel, as Tayibe had once been in Jordan. The police did not believe her. They told her that she did not seem to be uneducated, and that she knew exactly what she had done.’

  While the police were interrogating Fahima, Amin Andraus was racing across the country to get to Tayibe. Word had come through that his children would be crossing over that day, so he had set off as fast as he could, bumping along the roads in an Austin 8. He travelled with Yitzhak Chisik, the former governor of Jaffa. The two men were now friends, and Amin needed his help to talk their way through the military checkpoints. He ignored Chisik’s protests that he was ‘being kidnapped’. Fahima’s claims that she did not understand the difference between Tulkarm in Jordan and Tayibe in Israel were rejected. The police officers returned her and the four children to the border with Jordan, and ordered them to walk back the way they had come. Fahima and her charges were in serious danger. The Jordanian border guards had known the family was crossing over into Israel, but they did not know that they were coming back. Dusk was falling.

  Fahima and the children now faced a perilous trip across a military frontier, without any kind of protection or assistance, even on paper. The Jordanians could easily open fire on them. ‘I was terrified. I did not know what was happening,’ recalls Suad. ‘I remember how dark it was. Even today I am afraid of the dark. Coming into Israel, everything had been arranged. Going back to Jordan, nothing was. Fahima told Salim to run up the hill and tell the border guards that it had not worked, that we were coming back. It was quite a distance and they could have shot him. I was only seven. I remember that there was a dead body at the side of the road. My aunt told the others not to let me look.’

  Amin arrived in Tayibe just fifteen minutes after his family had been dumped at the frontier with Jordan. He could not follow them and he had no way of knowing if they would make it across, or what would happen to them if they did. Had he arrived just a few minutes earlier, he may have been able to keep them in Israel. He was a lawyer, who spoke fluent Hebrew, and he was used to negotiating with Israeli officials. ‘The people who saw him said they thought he was going to die on the spot,’ recalls Wedad. ‘He was so worried because we had no protection whatsoever on the way back. He thought he had lost us.’

  Fahima and the children made it across unharmed. First they moved to Tulkarm, then to Bir Zeit, a village not far from Ramallah, says Suad. ‘We had given away all our possessions and we had nothing left but the clothes we stood in.’ In Bir Zeit the children went to a school run by the Nasser family. ‘We rented a room from Kamal Nasser, who later became a PLO spokesman in Beirut.’ In 1950, the Andraus family was finally reunited by the Red Cross. Fahima and the children crossed from Jordan into Israel at the Mandlebaum Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem. The children’s memories of their father had grown hazy. ‘When we came through the gate, my father rushed over and kissed me,’ says Suad. ‘I asked Wedad, “Who is this man?”’

  In Jaffa, Aharon Chelouche, great-grandson of his namesake, was now a military governor, in charge of the city’s remaining Arabs. The old ties of friendship and commerce between the Chelouche family and the Arab notables of Jaffa had been severed for ever by the 1948 war. There were no more cups of coffee with the Arab traders in the port or around Clock Tower Square, or invitations to lunch. The Arabs whom Aharon knew from before 1948 now came to him as supplicants. He had the power to turn their lives upside down, if he so chose, or ease their paths through the maze of bureaucracy and security services.

  Born in 1921, Aharon Chelouche lived in Tel Aviv until his death in 2004. Tall and well-dressed, with a head of thick white hair, he exuded the legendary Chelouche charisma. Like many of his generation, he spoke an almost quaint English, learnt during the Mandate, which was peppered with expressions such as ‘a certain fellow’. In the autumn of his years, Aharon looked back on his life. Some episodes, it seems, troubled him. ‘In those years between 1948 and 1950, I could give out – not only in Jaffa, but in the whole country – licences, permissions and even decide the nomination of teachers. I had to provide accommodation and give the Arabs permission to move, as Jaffa was a military zone. I gave out visas, or permission for someone to return to Jaffa from outside Israel. They had many troubles, many problems to solve and I was at their service.’

  The needs of the new state came before old ties of friendship. Before 1948 the Mustakim family, part of Jaffa’s Arab elite, were close friends with the Chelouches. They were rich landowners who owned large parts of Jaffa, around Bustros Street. ‘Ali Mustakim fled as soon as he could to Lebanon, before the war started. He took a boat and a girl with him,’ said Aharon. ‘After a few months, he wanted to come back. He was a good friend of the family. But we did not give him permission, because he was not in the country when we entered Jaffa. According to the law, he would be an infiltrator. It was very difficult for me as I knew the man. I will tell you a story I don’t like to tell. Ali Mustakim came back two or three times and each time we refused him permission. He took a boat to Haifa and we did not let him in. He took a plane to Haifa airport and we did not let him in. Then he came through from Jordan. He wanted his houses back. We didn’t give him permission, because all these houses now belonged to the state.’ Still Ali Mustakim did not give up. He returned bearing gifts, things he thought would touch the hearts of the Israelis. ‘He crossed over again, carrying two Sefer Torahs.3 They had been captured by the Arab Legion in 1948. Ali Mustakim had bought them from Arabs in Bethlehem. Still we did not let him in, and he went back. Three months later he had a heart attack and died.’

  Some time after, Aharon was sent to the area around Tayibe. Jordan had ceded this area to Israel under the 1949 agreement that fixed the armistice line between the two countries. But were the Arabs living in the ‘Triangle’, as the area was known, to be citizens of Jordan or Israel? The Triangle’s fate was extremely sensitive. Britain, the United States and Jordan all feared that Israel would expel the Arabs of the Triangle once it took possession in June 1949. Certainly the Israeli army would have preferred this. President Truman conveyed his concerns to Israel. Emptying the Triangle would put paid to any hope of a settlement in the tortuous negotiations between Israel and the Arab states that had continued without success since 1948. The agreement between Israel and Jordan stated that those Arabs in the Triangle who could prove residency would be allowed to stay, but those
who could not would be expelled to Jordan. Many of those told to leave did not want to, as they had no means of earning a living, or finding a home for their family in Jordan.

  Aharon recalled: ‘I was given an army platoon and we gave out identity cards to those who were allowed to stay. Within a few years they were given Israeli citizenship. We came to the town of Tirah, and I heard a lot of shouting and crying. I asked a fellow from the army what was going on.’ The officer told Aharon that one man was proving particularly stubborn, an Arab who was not a resident of the Triangle, but Jordan. Aharon told the officer that he had to deal with hundreds of people like this and went into his office. The Arab man burst into Aharon’s office. He begged, pleaded and began to kiss Aharon’s leg, to show his abject supplication. Aharon recalled: ‘He asked if I could please let him stay in Israel. He said he could not go to Jordan, he had nothing to eat there, he was responsible for six people, and that he would die if he had to go back.’

  Aharon picked up the man’s file and opened it. His eyes widened. The man’s name was Samarra, from the region of Tulkarm, where the Chelouche family had found sanctuary at the end of the First World War. It was the home of Ibrahim Samarra. Now Aharon did have some further questions. ‘I asked him if he knew any Jews, and who his grandfather was. He said he did not know any Jews, but his grandfather, who was called Hajj Ibrahim Samarra, did know a family of Jews who lived in Tel Aviv and Jaffa.’ The wheel of history had turned full circle. ‘I called Ben-Gurion’s office. I told them that I could not leave this man to his fate. I asked them for permission to let him stay. They were not bothered what I did. They said I was the decision maker, and I could decide myself.’ Over a thousand Arabs were expelled to Jordan, but Aharon Chelouche granted the grandson of Hajj Ibrahim Samarra, together with his family and relatives, permission to stay in Israel. ‘I never told him why. I didn’t want to.’

  On 15 October 1950, the pharmacy student Fakhri Geday returned home to Jaffa from Beirut, under a family reunion scheme that allowed Israeli officials to exercise compassionate discretion. The scheme was a response to the severe diplomatic pressure from the United Nations, and the United States, to allow a substantial number of Palestinian refugees to return home. Israel and the Arab states had been negotiating for months in Lausanne, but the talks were deadlocked. Israel’s public position was that any such return would be conditional on the Arab states signing a full peace agreement. The Arab states refused. The refugees, it was agreed in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus, would be better used to keep up the political and diplomatic pressure on Israel.

  But Tel Aviv had to concede something. Israeli officials announced the family reunion programme: ‘a broad measure easing the lot of Arab families disrupted as a result of the war’.4 In fact it was extremely narrow. Israel issued 3,113 permits, and by September 1951 just 1,965 refugees had returned.5 Those few suffered severe culture shock. ‘It felt as if I had been dropped in a strange country. The people, their behaviour, the language, everything was totally different. I had no friends here any more. I could not find a single one of my friends.’ Jaffa was turned into a giant transit camp, says Fakhri. ‘We had Jews here from all over the world. The Arab houses are big, and each has four rooms, a hall and a salon. Each room had a family living in it. The city was totally full. To know Jaffa how it was, and to see it like that, it was a terrible shock. Everything was lost. The glory days were gone, the people, the aristocracy of old Palestine, all gone.’ The halcyon days were over for ever, but Fakhri’s struggle with the Israeli authorities was only just beginning.

  13

  New Lives

  1948–early 1950s

  ‘In some way, all of us are still travelling.’

  Frank Meisler, who left Danzig in 1939

  and settled in Tel Aviv in the early 1950s

  Exhausted, filthy and disorientated, the Hammami family disembarked at the Lebanese port of Tyre at the end of April 1948. The children headed straight for the jugs of fresh orange juice laid out at a nearby café. ‘To this day I am not sure whether our father paid for the juice or whether it was an act of kindness and hospitality on the part of our Lebanese hosts. I like to think it was the latter,’ says Mustafa Hammami. ‘Either way, the juice was delicious. It not only quenched our thirst but calmed us somehow into a strange but still sombre mood. We felt strangely quiet after the shock of leaving Jaffa, mixed with our expectations of experiencing a new and different land.’

  In Jaffa the Hammamis had lived a comfortable, middle-class life. Now they were refugees, to be processed by the Lebanese authorities, and partly dependent on the charity of others. Fadwa explains: ‘They wanted to take us to a refugee camp. But we could not live in a tent. My father said that we have family in Lebanon. My mother did, because she was a Shattila, a family who are well known in Lebanon.’ After a few days in Beirut, the Hammamis moved to Faluga, a village in the mountains, where they spent their first year. For Fadwa and her family it was a harsh awakening to the reality of life in exile. ‘In Jaffa we had a lovely life, we were well-to-do. My mother was pampered, with people to serve her. We lived comfortably. Then my parents had to leave with all their children, and give them a new life in a new country. Suddenly we had nothing. I was a child and felt deprived, of my friends, my school and the beautiful surroundings of Jaffa.’

  Ahmad’s funds steadily dwindled. He was not allowed to work, and everything had to be paid for. He hired a private tutor to teach the children, selling off the carpets and Nafise’s jewellery to keep the family warm and fed. After a year, Ahmad and Nafise decided to move to the Syrian capital, Damascus. They had family there. But the city offered little sanctuary. The winter of 1949 was particularly cold. The political situation was very unstable. At the end of March Colonel Husni Za’im, the army chief of staff, took power in a coup. During his brief period in command Colonel Za’im made several overtures to Israel, offering to absorb 250,000 refugees in exchange for peace and Israeli concessions over land and water. These were rejected by Ben-Gurion, and Za’im was soon toppled in another coup. The Hammamis could not settle in Damascus. The severe winters were unpleasant and the political situation disturbing. Ahmad wanted a stable environment for his wife and children, where they could make a home and enrol in a proper school. He decided that the family should move to Beirut. Perhaps there the Hammamis could find, if not peace, at least some stability to try and rebuild their lives.

  Once the family had found a house, the priority was the nine children’s education. But finding decent schools was expensive and problematic. Fadwa says: ‘Steadily our standard of living became lower and lower. We were not accepted in the Lebanese state-school system. The government said that we would have to go to school in the refugee camps, if we wanted to study in Lebanon. We would not do that.’ Nafise went to see her relatives in the Shattila family. ‘She asked them for help. She told them that her sons and daughters needed to go to school, and that we could not live in a refugee camp.’ Eventually some of the Hammami children were allowed to enrol in a state school, while others went to a private one. ‘For Leila and me it was a disaster as the school taught in French, and in Jaffa we had studied in Arabic and English. It was very difficult for us to start all over again.’

  Ahmad’s funds were finally released from the bank in Palestine, which eased the family’s financial situation. But he still could not work. Lebanon, like most Arab countries, was unwilling to naturalise the Palestinian refugees. Its leaders feared that a large influx of Palestinians would tip the delicate balance between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and Maronite Christians. Most Palestinians mixed only with other refugees in Lebanon, says Fadwa. ‘We went to each other’s houses. We didn’t know Lebanese people. But the Palestinians in Beirut kept up their social life: they visited each other, and invited each other to their homes, going to weddings and so on. The Lebanese were friendly, but we didn’t even have enough money to live properly, so we could not make a social life.’ Some new pleasures were free. In Beirut, more liberal and
cosmopolitan than Jaffa, Fadwa swam in the sea for the first time.

  Frank Meisler, the young Jewish student who had left Danzig for London on a Kindertransport in 1939, had a warmer welcome than many young refugees. His grandmother and two aunts were waiting for him in London. He moved in with his mother’s older sister, Ruth, and her husband Kurt, in Putney. Frank’s English was soon good enough to attend a private school in north London, and after the initial adjustment – pupils could address teachers by name instead of as ‘Herr Professor’, and even stay seated – he thrived. He learnt the British arts of understatement and diffidence. There were occasional postcards from his parents in Warsaw: ‘We are well – write,’ instructed his father, the brevity of the communication concealing his fear. Frank had his photograph taken in school uniform and sent it to his parents. He studied hard, but however well he seemed to be doing, he was still a teenage boy, alone in a foreign country. When homesickness overwhelmed him, Frank found comfort in art, mining his memories of Danzig to create the impression, at least, of somewhere familiar. ‘I drew the Dutch gables, the stone stairs and the gargoyles that spouted water in the rain. I often dreamt of walking familiar streets, looking through familiar windows,’ he wrote in his memoir, On the Vistula, Facing East. Rumours steadily drifted across Nazi-occupied Europe to Putney about the fate of the Jews and the strange camps the Germans were building.