The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (23 page)

In late June 1967, Yasser Arafat and a small band of fellow self-styled revolutionaries snuck across the Jordan River into the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Palestinian
cadres,
as the fighters were known, wore black and moved through the Jordan Valley at night, evading low-flying aircraft and the spotlights of Israel's patrolling helicopters. Many of the hundreds of
cadres
crossing the river that summer had been trained in Syria; they slung old rifles, Swedish-made machine guns, and Russian-built Kalashnikovs over their shoulders and stuffed land mines, grenades, bullets, and explosive charges into their seventy-five-pound backpacks.

Since New Year's Day 1965, Arafat, Abu Jihad, and other
cadres
from Fatah had been launching small raids into Israel, mostly at military and industrial targets. For the most part, the attacks had had little practical effect. Yet the raids were significant on a psychological level. For Israel, the attacks had rattled a population for whom safety and security were paramount; for Palestinians and the world, in the words of fellow revolutionary Bassam Abu-Sharif, the attacks demonstrated "that the Palestinian spirit was not crushed . . . that the Palestinian people would never give up, that they would fight with whatever came to hand, by whatever means they could, to recover their dignity and their lost lands, to get justice."

Still, Arafat knew that a relative handful of young men waging cross-border hit-and-run raids with homemade explosives and old rifles could not actually change the status quo; he wanted to build an insurgency from within Palestine. He led his
cadres
to set up operations to relaunch armed struggle against Israel from the West Bank.

In July 1967, around the time Bashir and his cousins rode the bus to al-Ramla, Arafat traveled in disguise from one West Bank town to another, organizing secret cells to attack across the Green Line. He and his men slept in a network of caves north of Ramallah, much as Sheikh Izzadin al-Qassam had done in the Great Arab Rebellion of the 1930s. Arafat had quickly realized how fast he needed to move. Already the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence service, had established a formidable network of Palestinian informants whose eyes and ears recorded every revolutionary movement. In exchange the collaborators received money, traveling papers, or leniency for a brother or a father in jail. Each of Arafat's moves was therefore carefully calculated to avoid arrest. The legend of Abu Amar, Arafat's nom de guerre, was built largely on the stories of his narrow escapes: of the time he crawled out a back window as soldiers came through the front door; or when he eluded capture by dressing as an old woman; or when Israeli soldiers arrived at Arafat's cave to find his coffee still steaming on the fire.

Arafat was keenly aware of the power of symbolism. In photographs, the young revolutionary was always in military fatigues and dark glasses, his keffiyeh fashioned painstakingly into the shape of historic Palestine. The iconography and the actions of Arafat, his fellow Fatah leader Abu Jihad, and the other
cadres
invigorated a population disgusted by a second devastating defeat and subsequent occupation. They reinforced the conviction, held by Bashir and thousands of others, that the path to liberation could be determined only by the Palestinians themselves. The Soviet Union was rearming Egypt and Syria after their air forces were reduced to smoking ruins by the Israelis; Syria continued to aid Fatah; but it was increasingly clear to Palestinians that the Arab states would never again join forces to fight Israel. Even if they would, the rhetoric of the Arab leaders was taken as empty talk by Palestinians who felt they had been fooled by such promises of liberation in the past. Palestinians now understood that their painful longing for home would have to be answered from within. Arafat knew this instinctively; he captured his people's imagination with his slogans of "Revolution Until Victory," "In Soul and Blood We Sacrifice for Pales­tine," and "We Shall Return."

As September arrived in Ramallah, the lawyers' strike showed no signs of waning. Bashir and his fellow attorneys dug in, using the strike to protest both the occupation of the West Bank and the recent annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel. For the Israelis, the annexation would unite both sides of Jerusalem and provide Jews with permanent access to holy sites, including the Temple Mount; for the Arabs of East Jerusalem, whose dream was to have the capital of a future Palestinian state in their midst, "unification" was a belligerent act by an occupying power. Soon they would see Israeli construction crews building massive "suburbs" on East Jerusalem lands.

For Arab lawyers working in East Jerusalem, the Israeli annexation carried a huge professional and financial impact that threatened permanent loss of work or, at the very least, the necessity to learn Hebrew and pass the Israeli bar exam, which Bashir and the other lawyers had no intention of doing. Doing so would have implied an acceptance of the occupation and the annexation of East Jerusalem. At that point, though, Bashir believed the occupation of the remainder of the West Bank was temporary and that soon enough he and his fellow lawyers would all be getting back to work. Some signs suggested otherwise: Already, some Israelis, led by the National Religious Party, had begun building settlements in the West Bank, on land they considered part of Eretz Yisrael. Soon, the Israeli military governor would issue a decree that suggested the occupation might last much longer. Military Order 145 authorized Israeli lawyers to take the place of the striking Palestinians. Even before it was implemented, the Israelis began making arrests.

Late on the evening of September 17, 1967, Bashir woke up to the sound of men yelling and fists pounding on the door. "The Israeli soldiers are surrounding the house!" someone was screaming. Bashir came out of his room and into the glare of floodlights through the windows. "Open! Open!" Bashir heard the soldiers yelling. He did as he was told. Ten soldiers in battle gear stood at the door. Bashir would recall their faces, black beneath their helmets, and their Uzis pointed at his chest.

"All of you bring your identification," the one in charge shouted to no one in particular. Bashir brought his ID, and the soldier looked him over. "You're Bashir," he said. "Get dressed and come with me."

Zakia ran after Bashir as he went to his room to change out of his nightclothes. "Put on your warm clothes, son," she said. "We are at the end of the summer season."

Bashir spent one hundred days in a Ramallah jail. For much of that time, he was held at the Israel military headquarters, where officers interrogated him about his activism. "You are a leader," they would tell Bashir. They had been following his activities with the striking lawyers and assumed he knew much more. "Give us details about the resistance." Each time, his reply would be the same: "I believe in one thing: Palestine. And I hate one thing: occupation. And if you want to punish me, do it."

Bashir's arrest was part of a much wider counterinsurgency designed to root out dissidents, guerrillas, and others suspected of plotting attacks on Israeli soil. In late August, Fatah had launched combat operations against Israel. Some rebels were organized into secret armed cells; others operated as roaming bands of guerrillas, or "fugitive patrols." Arafat and his
cadres
were attempting to seize the mantle of Palestinian nationalism and had timed their actions to put pressure on Arab states not to signal any compromise on the right of return with Israel. At their summit meeting in Khartoum in late August, the Arab leaders indeed declared that "there would be no reconciliation with Israel."

Yet signs of accommodation with Israel were already emerging from the Arab states. In mid-October 1967, as Bashir sat in jail, a close associate of Egyptian president Nasser wrote a series of highly influential articles advocating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza—suggesting that the return to old Palestine would not happen. The next month, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 242, calling for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" in exchange for "termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."

The resolution called for Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and Gaza. Some hoped the withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza would lead to an independent Palestinian state; others assumed the land would revert to Jordanian control. In either case, the boundaries would be far different from those outlined by the 1947 UN partition plan. Israel would retain control of 78 percent of historic Palestine, including al-Ramla and Lydda.

Some Arab leaders, including Nasser and King Hussein of Jordan, sent signals suggesting they could support Resolution 242—Nasser would get the Sinai back, and Hussein hoped that a comprehensive peace could bring calm to his restive kingdom. For most Palestinians in 1967, however, 242 didn't go nearly far enough; their dream still lay in the fight to return to their homes in Palestine. Yet by December 1967, it was becoming clear that Arafat's goal of a mass insurgency was not going to catch fire in the occupied territories. Already, more than a thousand men had been jailed by the Israelis, reducing the ranks of Fatah. Soon Arafat, Abu Jihad, and other leaders would be discussing the need to shift tactics.

On December 11, a few miles from the house in Ramla, Palestinian rebels attacked Israel's national airport. The action was a failure tactically, but it marked the arrival of a new faction in the would-be independence movement: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Its leader was George Habash, the refugee from Lydda who had marched through the hills in the punishing heat in July 1948. Habash, who would soon become a permanent fixture on the list of Israel's top enemies, would spark revulsion in Dalia for years to come. For many Palestinians at the time, Habash was a courageous rebel, willing to fight for his people's fundamental rights by any means necessary.

At the end of 1967, Bashir was released from jail. He would report days of interrogation; no formal charges were filed. As he walked free, he would remember later, "I loved Palestine more than before, and I hated occupation more than ever."

One clammy gray morning in January 1968, Dalia awoke in Ramla with Bashir and his family on her mind. For months she had been thinking about Bashir's invitation to visit in Ramallah; today, she hoped, would be the day. Dalia didn't have Bashir's address or telephone number, so she had no choice but to show up in person to accept his invitation. She remembered that Bashir had told her, "When you get to Ramallah, just ask for the house of Bashir Khairi. Everyone will know."

Now she had to figure out how to get to Ramallah. The family's two-piston Citroen was not up to the task, and even if it was, Moshe would never have allowed his daughter to go to the West Bank. Dalia decided to call an English acquaintance, Richard, who had been wanting a date with the young woman who bore a strong resemblance to the American film star Natalie Wood. Richard didn't interest Dalia, but he did have a car. And under the circumstances, he was willing to drive Dalia across the Green Line into occupied Palestinian territory.

They set out in late morning, and as they rode east, the Judean Hills, as Dalia knew them, came into sharper relief. The hills were cast in multiple hues of purple; shadows were dappled with thin fingers of light. Dalia recalled the time when she was five, at home with her mother, when she pointed to these same hills, saying,
"Ima,
let's go to these mountains." When Solia told her that the mountains were far away, Dalia took her mother by the hand, saying, "No, no, if you really want to we can get there. One day, I will get there." As she approached the mountains of the West Bank, riding toward new ground with the quiet, tense Englishman, Dalia felt a
sense
of belonging.

The Englishman's car splashed through potholes on the unpaved winter roads of the West Bank. Dalia knew that somewhere on these roads Israeli tanks and jeeps were on patrol, but she and Richard saw mostly a terrain of stony hills, olive groves, and ancient villages growing out of the landscape. They neared Ramallah, driving northeast from Latrun and the empty Arab village of Imwas. Somewhere on the maze of roads north of Beit Sira, they became lost. Children from a nearby village surrounded the car. Dalia felt apprehensive listening to children speaking rapidly in Arabic.

They drove on, traveling down strange and deserted roads in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, still unsure of where they were going.

Six months earlier, in only six days, Israelis had engineered a stunning reversal of their image across the world: from victim to victor and also to occupier. The exhilaration of victory and the public exaltation in Israel and internationally had given way in some quarters to reflections on the brutality of war and the morality of the occupation. One young Israeli writer, Amos Oz, was already calling for a full withdrawal from the occupied territories on ethical grounds. Oz was also part of a team of young kibbutzniks who sought to chronicle the mixed emotions of Sabras, the native-born Ashkenazi Israelis, who were "dazed by the magnitude of their victory and, no less, shocked by the revelation of what war really is."

These were Dalia's contemporaries in the Israeli army, and they had been telling Oz and the other chroniclers of their moral ambivalence. On the one hand, almost every soldier saw the war as just—a defense against "Armageddon . . . of all the things we talked about years ago, when we were kids—about loving our country, about the continuation of Jewish life here in the Land of our Fathers." On the other hand, many soldiers returned to the kibbutz disturbed by the feeling of having become, in the words of one Sabra, "just machines for killing. Everyone's face is set in a snarl and there's a deep growl coming from your belly. You want to kill and kill. You've got to understand what things like that did to us. We hated and hated."