Saving Sophie: A Novel (22 page)

“Hello, Deborah.”

“Mr. Taggart, I want to talk to you again, but not on the phone.”

“All right. Can you see me first thing tomorrow morning?”

“Make it ten. I want to be sure Sean’s not at home.”

Kayla was seated at her desk when Liam returned. “How was your lunch? You’ll have to take me to Portillo’s one day.”

“How do you know where we ate?”

“I’m a spy. We have satellite surveillance.”

“What?”

Kayla laughed. “I just got off the phone with Harry. We were coordinating my travel to Israel next week.”

Liam smiled. “You might actually have a sense of humor.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised.” Kayla turned her attention to the monitor and showed the afternoon’s first slide. “Do you remember Mufti Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin al-Husseini from this morning?”

Liam nodded and shoehorned himself into his seat beside Kayla. “The mufti of Jerusalem, fomenter of riots and strikes. Bad dude, snuck off to Lebanon in drag. Joined there by his henchman Grandfather Ibrahim.”

Kayla raised her eyebrows. “You did listen!”

“Believe it or not.”

“As I told you this morning, Amin and Ibrahim went into exile in Lebanon, but they used it as a base to incite further riots. It didn’t take long for the French to issue an arrest warrant, and the two troublemakers were forced to escape from Lebanon into Iraq. They stayed there for two years. In 1941, Amin sponsored a pro-Nazi coup and tried to overthrow the British-run government. When Britain restored order, Amin and Ibrahim fled to Tehran, where they were welcomed by the pro-Nazi shah.”

“So, they became Nazis?”

“Dyed-in-the-wool. It suited their purpose. British agents nearly caught up with Amin and Ibrahim in Iran, and once again they had to flee, this time to Italy. Because they were constantly on the move, Ibrahim kept his family—Hamid, Mariam, Arif, and Safiya—back at their home in Haifa, and that’s where Arif al-Zahani grew up.

“While in Italy, Amin courted Mussolini. His purpose was to convince Il Duce to support the creation of an Arab state in Palestine, with Amin in charge, naturally. In return, he promised to supply Arab military support for the Axis. Mussolini was open to the idea, but wasn’t in a position to make it happen. So, Amin and Ibrahim then traveled north and sought out the world’s number one anti-Semite.”

“Hitler.”

“Correct. Amin and Ibrahim traveled to Berlin. There they met and ingratiated themselves with Hitler, trying to get his backing for a Palestinian state, again with Amin as supreme leader. Hitler admired Amin’s blue eyes and told him he must have Aryan blood.” She tapped the keyboard for a picture of Hitler and al-Husseini sitting together in animated conversation.

“‘The Arabs are Germany’s natural friends,’ Amin said to Hitler, and he offered to train Muslim armies for the Reich. In exchange, Hitler told Amin exactly what he wanted to hear: once Germany defeated Russia, the next step would be the destruction of the ‘Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power.’ In fact, Hitler told him, ‘The Jews are yours.’

“Amin and Ibrahim found an apartment in Berlin. Between 1942 and 1944 they assisted Hitler by recruiting Arabs for the Waffen-SS, and training Bosnian Muslims for the Nazi infantry. Amin’s Bosnian Muslims were responsible for the death of ninety percent of Bosnia’s Jewish community. Amin and Ibrahim met often with Himmler and Ribbentrop, and there’s a strong basis for believing they toured the death camps with Eichmann, who treated Amin as a close friend. Al-Husseini’s name was mentioned often at the Nuremberg trials, but by then he had escaped to Egypt, where he was welcomed by King Farouk.

“After the war, Amin and Ibrahim ended up in Gaza, once again heading up a group of militants. This time it was the al-Jihad al-Muqaddas, the Army of the Holy War. We know that group today as the Muslim Brotherhood. And it didn’t take long for Amin and Ibrahim to latch onto another cause. By the end of 1945, there were a quarter million Jews living in displaced persons camps throughout Germany, Austria, and Italy. They were the survivors of the Holocaust. They called themselves Sh’erit ha-Pletah, the ‘surviving remnant.’

“Overwhelmingly, the displaced persons, the DPs, wanted to emigrate to British Mandatory Palestine, but Britain had strict immigration quotas forged by Neville Chamberlain’s 1939 White Paper. Quotas in the US, Britain, and Canada essentially closed all those doors, as well.

“Everyone knew that the existence of the British and French Mandates were temporary and unsustainable. But, no matter what Britain envisioned for the postwar division of its territory, it was always rejected by Amin and the Arab leaders. They would have no part of sharing the land. They wanted it all. As a result, postwar Palestine was a cauldron of violence—from Amin and the Arabs, from Zionist paramilitary groups like the Irgun and the Haganah who wanted open immigration, and from the British soldiers themselves.

“In the midst of the growing anarchy, Britain turned to the fledgling UN to work out the solution. An eleven-nation committee was established and known as UNSCOP, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. The members traveled to Palestine and concluded, not surprisingly, that the Arab objectives and the Jewish objectives could not be reconciled. But nonetheless, they proposed a division of the land.

“On November twenty-ninth, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted and approved the Plan for Partition. The first portion dealt with the termination of the British Mandate and withdrawal of the British troops. The second part was the establishment of borders for two separate states—an Arab state and a Jewish state. The exception was Jerusalem, which was to remain under international control. Here is a map of what they devised.” A map of the partitioned territory appeared on Kayla’s monitor.

“The UN’s division, though it appeared to resemble a jigsaw puzzle, was based almost entirely upon ethnic demography. There were Jews living in the Arab portions and Arabs in the Jewish portions, but the lines were drawn to reflect the predominant culture. But Amin, the Arab League, and all of the surrounding Arab countries flatly rejected the UN Partition Plan and would not accept borders for either a Jewish state or an Arab state, no matter what the borders were.

“Ibrahim saw the future and it was violent. He knew that a partition would never be peacefully implemented, and he quickly acted to position his family for an upcoming war. He sent Hamid to Jordan and, using his contacts, had him enlist in the Jordanian Army as an officer. Given Ibrahim’s influence, Hamid rose rapidly in the ranks and soon became a squad leader. By the time of the 1948 war, he was commanding a company.

“On May thirteen, 1948, the British pulled out of the mandate, and the next day, May fourteenth, David Ben-Gurion took to the airwaves and proclaimed the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel in the territories granted by the UN Partition Plan. The very next day, May fifteenth, the combined armies of the six Arab League States commenced a coordinated military invasion of Israel.

“Israel was attacked from all directions. Egypt from the south and Syria from the north. From the east, Jordan marched its army across the Jordan River and occupied the entire West Bank including the eastern half of the city of Jerusalem. Hamid al-Zahani was in command of the Jordanian company that took Hebron. The territories captured by Jordan were referred to as the West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and remained that way until 1967. By the way, it was never referred to as Palestine. Use of the term Palestine was forbidden by the king of Jordan.

“A cease-fire was negotiated and an armistice was signed in April 1949. Not a peace treaty, mind you, just an armistice—they agreed to stop fighting, leaving the armies where they were. Jerusalem, which was originally intended to be international, was split down the middle for the first time in its history, Jordan on the east, Israel on the west. As it had in ancient times, Israel declared Jerusalem to be its capital.”

“What became of the al-Zahanis after the 1948 war?” Liam asked.

“Well, I told you Hamid was an officer in the battalion that captured Hebron. The Arab population there hailed Hamid as a hero, and he stayed there to make his home. Ibrahim had him appointed commander of the Jordanian Army garrison in Hebron. Hamid built the house that Arif occupies today.”

Kayla looked at her watch. “It’s getting late and I want to finish. We’ll jump ahead to the sixties because that was the era that launched the Palestinian movement. In 1964, the Arab League founded the Palestine Liberation Organization, which once again sought eradication of the Jews and the state of Israel. Ibrahim was a member of the inner circle from the very beginning.

“For the PLO, its credo was armed violence. Since terrorism, shootings, and bombings were Ibrahim’s stock-in-trade, he was a valuable soldier in the cause. But his terrorist activities proved to be his undoing. When he attempted to bomb a Tel Aviv restaurant in 1965, a single shot from an IDF rifle hit the explosives in Ibrahim’s arms and he was blown to bits. There wasn’t enough to bury. Hamid, enraged at his father’s death, led a party of Arab regulars into West Jerusalem in a late-night attack, killing fourteen civilians at a movie theater. From then on there was a price on Hamid’s head.

“The sixties was also a period of military buildup, thanks to the Soviets, who supplied arms to the Arab countries. As a result, Arab aggression against Israel increased, and it all came to a head in 1967. On May fifteenth, Egypt massed its troops and told the UN to remove its peacekeepers from Gaza and the Sinai, declaring, ‘Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight.’ Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon lined up beside Egypt.

“Israel looked to the US, but deeply engaged in Vietnam and in a cold war with the Soviets, Johnson told Israel to stand down. Do not fire the first shot. Israel realized it was going to go it alone, that it was only a matter of days before Nasser and the Arab League would attack. Greatly overmatched in troop size, weapons, tanks, and air power, Israel also feared the use of poison gas, which Nasser had used before. So, on June fifth, 1967, the entire Israeli Air Force took off in a surprise move at the breakfast hour and bombed the Egyptian airfields. Then the IAF flew north and destroyed the Syrian airfields. Jordan, which had been warned not to enter the fray, honored its pact with Egypt and announced, ‘The hour of revenge has come.’ Jordan began shelling Jerusalem.

“The battle for Jerusalem was fierce. Hamid brought his Hebron battalion north and attacked Jerusalem from the southern flank. But his aggression, like his father’s, was to be his undoing. On June seventh, in a furious battle in the Kidron Valley, just south of the Temple Mount, Hamid was shot and killed. Arif would have been twenty-three years old at the time. Now he had lost his grandfather and his father to Israeli gunfire.

“Later that same day, the Israeli army gained control of East Jerusalem and the Western Wall. Moshe Dayan declared, ‘We’ve reunited the city, the capital of Israel, never to part it again.’ The 1967 War was over in six days. Israeli ground troops forced the Jordanian Army all the way back across the river into Jordan, capturing all of the West Bank territory Jordan had seized in 1948. Israel remains in control of the area.”

“So, who does the land belong to? Who has the legitimate claim to the territories?” Liam said.

Kayla spread her hands. “Britain? It captured it from the Ottomans in 1920. Jordan? It captured it in 1948. Israel? It captured it in 1967. The UN Security Council took up the issue after the war and adopted Resolution 242. But it’s a complicated resolution with unclear meanings and intentionally vague provisions; 242 provided that Israel should withdraw from ‘occupied territories’ to ‘secure and recognized boundaries’ when there was a ‘just and lasting peace.’ But it didn’t specify which occupied territories, what recognized boundaries, or what would constitute a just and lasting peace. Furthermore, 242 didn’t specify who would be entitled to occupy the territories after the withdrawal. The Palestinians are not mentioned at all in Resolution 242.”

“And Israel has yet to withdraw from any occupied territories?”

“Not true. Sinai was given back to the Egyptians after Camp David in 1978, and Gaza was given up to the Palestinian Authority in 2005. That amounts to over ninety percent of the land Israel captured in 1967.

“But what about the rest—the so-called disputed West Bank? Why do you say the resolution was intentionally vague?”

“Resolution 242 didn’t say that Israel should withdraw from ‘
all the
occupied territories’ or even ‘
the
occupied territories.’ At the time it was being drafted, Arab states insisted that the resolution say
all the territories,
but the Security Council rejected the language. The withdrawal was purposefully left vague for future negotiation. So, to this date, negotiations continue. Even now, almost fifty years later.

“There are 2.7 million Palestinians living in West Bank cities, under Israeli military authority, but Palestinian civil control. In 1995, at the end of the Oslo Peace Process, the West Bank was divided into three administrative divisions or ‘zones.’ The Palestinian Authority was created to provide a government for certain West Bank towns and Gaza. Palestinian cities with no Israeli settlements were designated Zone A. The Palestinian Authority was given complete civil and police autonomy over Zone A cities. Israeli citizens and military are forbidden from entering without permission, although the IDF does enter when necessary on security or emergency missions. Jericho, Ramallah, and Nablus are examples of such cities.

“Zone B areas have joint Palestinian and Israeli control. There is an IDF presence, generally due to Israeli citizens living in the area. Zone C has full Israeli control, both civil and security, and consists of Israeli settlements in Samaria and Judea. What Oslo did
not
do was to recognize a Palestinian state or restrict settlement expansion.”

Liam nodded his understanding. “The two lingering issues. Arif al-Zahani lives in Hebron. What zone is that?”