Stateless

by Alan Gold

He glanced at his watch then back through the windscreen. His mind ticked away the remaining moments. And then he heard a massive explosion. The sound was deep and resonant, though there was almost nothing visual to show for its scale. The damage was contained and focused and a signal to those inside.

  The moment the explosion in the walls above the Turkish bath was heard and felt throughout the prison, the inmates who knew of the raid – members of Irgun – went into action. For days, TNT had been smuggled inside by Jewish cooks; it had been fashioned into hand grenades and bombs, and as the external bomb was detonated, bombs inside the prison were set off, blasting off doors, and breaching the internal structures adjacent to where Shimshon and his men had fractured the external walls.

  Though a carefully guarded secret operation, the moment the sound of the explosions ripped through the prison, hundreds of Arab and Jewish inmates immediately knew that there was a gaol break happening. They rushed to the sound of the explosions while Irgun and Lehi prisoners, armed with the grenades, blew open iron grilles and doors and held the stunned British guards at bay.

  Within minutes, the inside of the prison became a smoke-filled, ear-splitting maelstrom of explosions, gunfire, screams from wounded and dying men, orders yelled, feet running and yelps of panic. But the prisoners of the Irgun and Lehi knew precisely what they should be doing, and for which exit point in the wall they should be heading. Some Jews knew that their task wasn’t to escape but to form a vanguard to hold the British soldiers in position so that their colleagues could climb out of the breach; it was a suicide mission for four of the men, knowing that they’d either be killed by the guards or hanged for their participation in the escape.

  The corridors of the prison became a nightmare of flashes of light and detonations as bullets erupted from the barrels of guns tracing arcs through the dense smoke. The screams of pain and hatred from wounded men blended into a discordant babble of languages. Those who had learned Hebrew when they arrived in Palestine reverted to their native German or Hungarian or Polish as they fell to the floor wounded in the arms or legs or back; those British soldiers screamed blood-curdling curses against the Jews; those Arabs who used the opportunity to escape begged for the help of their Prophet or screamed out Allahu Akbah as they ran towards the hole in the wall, hoping to be able to escape from the prison into the ancient alleyways of the city.

  Outside the walls, close to where the men under Dov’s command had blown the external hole, he and his second in command, Ariel Waxman, waited until the first men had climbed through the breach. Dov turned to Waxman, and quipped, ‘Not a word about this in the Palestine Post . . . got it?’

  Waxman had already composed in his mind the first three paragraphs of the article he’d be writing later that night, a satirical condemnation of the Irgun for preventing the British from doing their job of murdering Jewish soldiers. ‘Try and stop me, Shimshon,’ he said. ‘This is going to make headlines around the world. Wait till those bastards in the United Nations read it. I can’t wait for the reaction of the British ambassador.’

  Both men looked around them to see whether any genuine British troops were appearing on the periphery. They hoped that when the real troops saw the Irgun men in British uniforms, holding rifles to kill escapees, they’d move on to other locations. If not, then there would be a gun battle, which would give cover to the men escaping from the prison.

  The smoke billowing out of the massive hole quickly dissipated into the air, and Shimshon and Ariel saw the first man’s head suddenly appear. He looked right and left, and Dov barked a command in Hebrew, ‘Move, don’t look . . . move!’

  He jumped out of the hole, followed by one, then three. Altogether twenty-eight freedom fighters from Lehi and the Irgun emerged and scrambled into lorries and trucks emblazoned with the insignia of the Engineering Corps of the British army.

  But more and more men suddenly started to appear, men whose faces were unrecognised by either Dov or Ariel. They were Arab prisoners, clearly benefiting from the meticulously planned incursion. Dozens and dozens of Arab men hurled themselves out of the hole in the wall and on to the pavement and ran across the road into the shuks and alleyways of the ancient city.

  Suddenly, a British army truck screeched around a corner and accelerated towards Dov and Ariel. It screamed to a halt twenty yards from where they were standing, and a dozen men jumped off the back tray. They immediately shouldered their rifles and began firing at the Jews who stood on the pavement. Dov screamed in pain, clutching his chest as he fell to the floor. The Jews hid behind their truck in order to return fire, and in the melee, some British soldiers were shot dead or severely wounded. Ariel stood to get a better shot, and suddenly yelped, spun around, and fell to the floor, wounded in the shoulder. He had enough strength to shout, ‘Move out, quick. Go!’

  The men knew what to do. They had to save themselves, and leave the dying and wounded where they’d fallen. This was the Irgun way. As the truck roared off, the British jumped back into their lorry, and took off in hot pursuit.

  And suddenly, a place that moments ago had been a vortex of smoke and flames, of gunshots and noise, of joy and agony, was silent. Apart from the sound of distant gunfire, of the occasional barked order, the street where the explosion had taken place was quiet.

  Ariel looked around, and saw Dov, his eyes staring into the eternal void, close by him. Another Jew was also dead. He raised his head to see the place where the British had been shooting, and saw two Tommies lying in the roadway. And he realised that he’d been spared. He would use this opportunity to crawl across the road, and somehow find a place where a doctor could remove the bullet that had torn his shoulder apart. It was throbbing mercilessly, but he was alive, and though an atheist, he thanked God for saving him. And he started to compose the rest of the article he’d write against the British tomorrow.

  He was halfway crawling across the road when he sensed somebody walking up to him. A British soldier? Then he was dead. It was agony, but he turned his head, and saw the legs of a woman in a skirt, a European skirt, not dressed like an Arab woman. Relief overcame him.

  He raised his head more to see who it was, flashes of pain radiating from his torn shoulder. And he recognised her immediately. He smiled in gratitude at his good fortune.

  ‘Judit. Thank God you’re here. I’ve been – ’

  She raised a pistol, shook her head, and said softly, ‘I’m sorry, Ariel.’

  ‘I don’t . . . what . . .?’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re part of my problem,’ she said, just a second before she pulled the trigger. The bullet blew his face away from his skull.

  West of the village of Ras Abu Yussuf

  1947

  Shalman used a small trowel to carefully scrape away the dirt from the short, shallow trench over which he huddled. In the cave the air was cool and dry while the bright sun from the entrance filled it with light. He teased the soil away and, in looking for remnants of the ancient past, found he was able to temporarily escape the troubling present.

  His argument with Judit echoed in his mind and was confused together with the images of the truck rolling slowly towards the aircraft on the runway. Judit’s cold stare and her determination that put her cause above her family was overlaid in his mind with the body of an Arab boy engulfed in flame in an explosion. But here and now, with his hands in the ancient dirt, such thoughts seemed for a brief moment very far away. This was where he belonged. This was where his head was clear.

  He had arranged to come here with Mustafa as often as he could, which in truth was rare between caring for his daughter and the demanding routine of Mustafa having to work on his father’s meagre plot of land. But here they were, side by side, toiling in the earth for ancient treasures at the burial site of a woman named Ruth.

  Yet, despite the calm that Shalman found in the cave, Mustafa sensed something was worrying the strange friend working silently beside him.

  ‘You are very quiet today,’ said Mustafa.

/>   Shalman just shrugged, the sort of response more typically associated with Mustafa.

  ‘That’s unusual for a Jew,’ he said drily.

  Shalman let out a small laugh then sat back and put down his trowel.

  For the past months they’d been together, and true to his word, Shalman had been teaching Mustafa. Shalman had taken pleasure in showing the sharply intelligent and attentive young Arab man the university books he had been studying and they talked not just of history and archaeology but of mathematics and geography and cartography. It was maps that Mustafa took to most readily and he would eagerly pore over any that Shalman was able to beg, borrow or steal away to bring to him. The two men compared maps showing ancient borders and conquests of the Romans and the Egyptians and the Crusaders, with modern maps showing contemporary towns, cities and roads. And they would fantasise about what they might discover if able to dig under some of Jerusalem’s most ancient sites.

  A map had been recently published in the newspaper showing the UN-proposed partition of Palestine, and Shalman had brought this with him to discuss with Mustafa. His mind was so focused on the map as a reference for where they might explore in the future that he was blinkered to its contemporary implications. Mustafa looked it over with thoughtful eyes.

  ‘Where will you live when they carve up the land?’ asked Mustafa.

  ‘Stay in Jerusalem, I should think,’ Shalman answered.

  ‘It is to be a . . .’ Mustafa searched with his finger on the map for the term, ‘Corpus Separatum?’

  ‘That’s right. Jerusalem will belong to nobody,’ said Shalman.

  ‘Nobody?’

  ‘Well, it’ll belong to everyone. And be run by the United Nations. Jerusalem is our birthright, yet it’s being taken from us by the governments of the world.’

  ‘We have as much right to Jerusalem as you do, Shalman,’ said Mustafa softly.

  Shalman didn’t want to begin one of the perennial arguments over who had a greater claim to the city, and so he mumbled an apology.

  ‘But you could still live there?’ Mustafa asked.

  ‘Yes. And so could you if you wanted.’

  Mustafa gave a snort. ‘I can’t grow olive trees in the city.’

  The two men sat in silence for a moment before Mustafa spoke again. ‘Many Arabs won’t accept this partition. Syrian, Jordanian, Egyptian, and especially the Saudis – they’ll never accept Jerusalem as a Jewish capital. Funny how the people who don’t actually live here have the strongest opinions.’

  ‘Not so different for us. The fate of my people rests with the United States, Russia, Britain.’

  ‘And in between are you and me. Two men with nowhere else to go.’

  Shalman smiled. ‘We could always live together in a cave.’

  Mustafa grinned back and took a swig from his canteen before tossing it to Shalman.

  ‘You think there will be war, don’t you?’ said Shalman.

  ‘You Jews have enemies on all sides, my friend. To the north, to the east . . .’ His hand traced the map on the ground, ‘to the south. Only the sea is your friend.’ He looked up from the map. ‘And Arab armies from all sides will drive you into it. And we will be in the middle. If you asked me where I will live when they carve up the land, I want to say the best place for me to be is to be far away from here.’

  ‘There’s not going to be a war, Mustafa. People will come to their senses. No one wants to die or fight if they don’t have to. After the pounding the British have taken, after the millions and millions who died because of Hitler, nobody wants another war. Not your people, not my people.’

  Mustafa shook his head sadly. ‘Yet I think underneath your archaeologist’s clothes, you’ve been a freedom fighter. You haven’t said so, but I can tell. You’re much more than an archaeologist; the way you handle yourself, the way you’re always checking what’s around you. You’re as much soldier as academic. And Shalman, my friend, if you think there’s going to be no war, then you have more faith in people than I do. Which is strange since it’s you who’s the fighter and me who’s just a farmer . . .’

  The words stung Shalman, reminding him of the airfield and the truck and the explosion that he caused and the little Arab boy.

  Mustafa continued, ‘I’m more of a rationalist. As you teach me about mathematics I can do the calculation. There are a hundred million Arabs and only eleven million Jews in the whole world. And how many of your people are here? Three, four hundred thousand Jews in Palestine the newspaper tells me.’ Mustafa shook his head again. ‘The numbers don’t add up, my friend. If I were you, I would leave this place.’

  Shalman detected a strange hint of sadness and resignation in Mustafa’s voice that troubled him much more than the weight of numbers.

  Jerusalem

  29 November 1947

  Judit sat in the crowded room along with two dozen people around a table on which were coffee cups, dirty plates, dried fruits, hummus, fried eggplant and ashtrays overflowing with long-dead cigarettes. She’d left Shalman at home with their baby daughter. Nobody in Jerusalem was willing to babysit as the whole of the Jewish community was at home, or with neighbours, glued to radios. Only Shalman, it seemed, was distant and uninterested in the imminent news. Judit didn’t question this strange behaviour as she knew she needed to be present for the announcement.

  She looked into the faces of her colleagues in the Irgun, those who had begun this battle with her in Lehi, some members of the Haganah, and others who were associated with Israel’s fledgling civilian army. What was happening at this moment was a reminder of the time two years earlier, crowding round a similar radio listening to the plummy voice of a BBC announcer telling the world that the Instrument of Surrender had been signed and the Second World War was at an end. In the last two intense years Judit had honed her skills in what she’d trained to be: a killer fighting the British, but also preparing the way for a communist state and a part of the empire of the Soviet Union.

  Judit looked at the faces now gathered in the room. Her eyes fell on a young woman who she’d known since the attack on the British officers at Goldschmidt House, Ashira from Tunisia.

  After that night, Ashira sought her out with a closeness that made Judit uncomfortable. Ashira was driven by anger; to Judit that was plain to see. Her brutal treatment at the hands of a group of Bedouin men on her journey to Palestine hadn’t broken her, but had made her fiercely determined. Not fearless – Judit had seen how Ashira’s hands had trembled on her weapon at times – but the way she gritted her teeth and willed herself to be strong impressed Judit.

  As she looked at the crowd gathered around the radio, Judit could not help but think of those who were absent, those who had died or disappeared or were locked up in British jails. And as she thought of the missing faces, her mind also turned to those she herself was responsible for, the lives she had snuffed out – British, Arab and Jewish. How many more lay ahead of her? She had killed eight militant right-wing ultra-Zionists in the past year. Between them, her Russian secret group had killed five times that number – nearly fifty leading politicians, journalists and scholars whose views and potential place in a future government would be counter to socialist ideals.

  It was, in simple terms, a strategy based on the fact that decisions would be made by those who were still standing – with Palestine in a frenetic state, with everybody hating everybody else, with bullets flying and even children taking up arms, nobody had yet put together the disparate and disconnected deaths of these fifty right-wing Jews among the hundreds of Jews who had died since the end of the war, so nobody had perceived a pattern. That was what Moscow Central had counted on. Palestine was so full of murder and death and trauma that the loss of an individual was no longer noticed.

  Judit’s attention returned to the present when one young man at the table asked, ‘Are they really going to do it?’

  ‘They have to,’ another young man said. ‘Look at the shit the Indians and the Pakistanis are in since Britai
n withdrew. The last thing the UN wants is for the forced march of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into Syria or Lebanon like the Muslims from India into Pakistan. They’re bound to vote for partition. It’s the only solution.’

  ‘They might still give the mandate to some other country and they’d just replace the British,’ said Ashira.

  ‘No,’ said Judit, gently moving position so that she was sitting next to Ashira. ‘There’s not another country in the world who’ll take the mandate off the British. We’ve created too much chaos, so it’s partition or nothing.’ Judit gave Ashira a wink.

  Yossi Dagan, an Irgun leader from Galilee, then held up his hand. ‘Shush!’ he snapped. ‘Quiet! I think it’s time!’

  He reached over and turned up the volume of the radio. At the same time, people cleared the table of plates, so that the map of the Plan of Partition could be laid out. As it was unrolled, everybody looked at the reality of what Israel would become should the vote go ahead. While there would be exultation and celebration, the truth told in the map was more sombre. The land allocated to the Jews was, in places, so thin that it could be walked from east to west in hours. An army could cut off the north from the south with ease, and a plane could cover the distance in minutes. To look at the map with a critical eye was to realise the reality of being scattered and surrounded everywhere by the enemy, with the nation’s back to the wall; in this case, the sea.

  ‘The speeches for and against have finished,’ said Yossi, listening carefully to the commentator above the crackle and hiss of the static. ‘They’re now calling the vote in alphabetical order.’

  ‘So when the vote is passed we can call ourselves Israelis?’ Ashira whispered into Judit’s ear.

  ‘No, it’s just the beginning,’ Judit whispered back. ‘A lot of politicians still have a lot of talking to do. But it means the British will withdraw and within a year the UN will vote to declare Israel and Palestine the world’s newest nations.’