Read Online A Street Divided by Dion Nissenbaum - Free Book Online

“no man’s land.” It belonged to Palestinian farmers forced from their homes by war. Now, the Jordanian ambassador told the Security Council, Israel was using tree planting as an excuse to seize more ground in Jerusalem. 42
    â€œWe are now faced with a particular form of Israeli violation of the Armistice Agreement, the aim of which is the same as that of other aggressions on the part of Israel, namely, to get access to, to exploit and occupy privately owned Arab lands,” Ambassador Yusuf Haikal told the Security Council. 43
    Haikal left no doubt that Jordan was prepared to go to war over the trees if the United Nations didn’t do something.
    â€œIn the event of the persistence by Israel in the work described earlier,” he warned the council, “my government would have no alternative but to take the necessary steps and measures to ensure the safety of the area and the preservation of the status quo. ” 44
    When his turn came to speak, Israel’s deputy UN ambassador, Mordecai Kidron, immediately mocked Jordan for bringing the issue to the Security Council. He characterized the Jordanians as petty rivals who were willing to pick a fight over the most absurd things. Like trees.
    â€œIt might appear that the appropriate place for a discussion of this nature is the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations rather than the Security Council,” Kidron said, “because, despite the assertions of the Jordan foreign minister, there are no aggressive or other military aspects to the planting of trees in this area.” 45
    Kidron cast Jordan as hopelessly trapped in a pitiful paradigm that made the country’s leaders reflexively anti–anything Israel did, even planting trees. He deftly framed Jordanians as reactionary rejectionists who saw dark deeds and hidden agendas on Jerusalem’s innocent hillsides.
    â€œWe have in Israel a particular feeling about trees,” Kidron told the ambassadors from the world’s leading powers. “Among the things of which we are most proud in the history of modern Jewish settlement in the Holy Land is the conversion of large stretches of barren hills and rock strewn mountains into verdant forest.” 46
    Kidron went on at some length about the importance of trees to Israelis. They planted them when people were born. They planted them when people died.
    â€œTrees are for us symbols of life and of growth,” he told the Security Council. “It was thus with a particular feeling of amazement and lack of comprehension that we heard that Jordan wished to put a stop to the planting of trees in the former Government House area.” 47
    There was nothing nefarious about the tree planting, Kidron said. It was little more than Israel doing on its side of No Man’s Land what Jordanians were doing on their side. When Kidron was done, Arkady Sobolev, the Soviet Union’s ambassador to the United Nations, leaned in on Jordan’s side. Like the Jordanians, Sobolev saw Machiavellian hands pulling hidden strings. He blasted Kidron for trying “to belittle the significance of these works” that the Israeli leader “seemed to regard . . . as a joke.” 48 This was no laughing matter to the Soviet ambassador. Sobolev agreed with Jordan: This wasn’t about trees. It was about Israel doing America’s bidding by stirring up conflict to keep the Middle East in a constant state of chaos.
    â€œAggressive circles in certain governments are interested in the maintenance of such tension and are using Israel as a tool for the implementation of their own plans,” Sobolev said.
    When he decided to speak, America’s ambassador ignored the Soviet implications entirely and backed calls for continued UN examination of the situation.
    â€œWe do hope,” Lodge said in time-tested, mealymouthed diplomatic speak, “that . . . both parties would refrain from taking any action between the armistice