Free A Street Divided by Dion Nissenbaum Page A

walk in the park.
    In 1887 a German banker and two Jewish partners decided to build a block of affordable housing on a ridgeline in Abu Tor. They got halfway through the construction of Beit Yosef before they gave up. In the 1920s, about ten Jewish families were living in Beit Yosef when the city was hit by a wave of tension focused on restricted Jewish access to the Western Wall. Though local residents tried to protect the Jewish families in Beit Yosef, a bloody 1929 revolt sparked by the tensions made it clear that Jewish families were imperiled. 2
    The Jewish families moved away from Abu Tor and a new Palestinian business class moved in. The neighborhood became a magnet for merchants from Hebron, who settled in Abu Tor and built many of the stone homes with arched windows, mosaic floors and high ceilings that still define its historic character.
    Finding Martin Buber in a War Zone
    In the run-up to the 1948 war, Abu Tor had little strategic value. It had served mostly as a staging ground for a few militant attacks along Hebron Road, the busy route on the edge of Abu Tor that connected the Old City with Bethlehem and Hebron to the south. It also connected the British Mandate headquarters, on the ridge some called the Hill of Evil Counsel, with central Jerusalem. Militants planted roadside bombs, hit the government printing press building on Hebron Road and launched small attacks on the railroad station right next door. 3
    When Israel’s new army made its push to control Jerusalem’s Old City in 1948, it swept through Abu Tor with relative ease. The soldiers faced little resistance on the hillside as Jordanian fighters fell. Most of the families had fled. And it wasn’t a place where Arab forces could easily hold ground. Israeli soldiers held just enough of Abu Tor to protect the train station and government buildings on the western edge of the neighborhood along Hebron Road.
    As Israelis moved from house to house in Abu Tor looking for enemy soldiers trying to hide among the civilians, they ran into an unexpected resident: Martin Buber, the famed existentialist philosopher known for his wild, white beard, which sometimes made him look like a deranged, homeless prophet. 4
    â€œHe had a weird look,” said one Israeli soldier in a military report unearthed by Doron Oren, an Israeli researcher who wrote a dissertation on Abu Tor. When the Israelis asked Buber why he hadn’t sought safety somewhere else, he apparently told them he wasn’t worried. 5
    â€œHe was sure no one would hurt him,” the soldier said. 6
    Buber moved away from the new border drawn by Dayan and Tell. The crown of Abu Tor became the eastern edge of Israel. The houses abandoned by the Palestinian merchants were given to dozens of low-level Israeli government clerks who had been forced to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if they wanted to keep their jobs.
    Many of them weren’t happy to be moving from their more temperate coastal lives in Tel Aviv to abandoned homes on Israel’s new border with Jordan. The clerks filed complaint after complaint asking the new Israeli government to fix up their houses. When the government dragged its feet, the clerks banded together in protest. 7
    They complained about being placed on the border; they said they couldn’t help noticing that other government workers, those with connections and more responsibility, had been given nicer homes away from the border in Katamon. The complaints and protests usually went nowhere. 8
    As more and more people began moving to Israel, a country the Jewish people could finally call their own, its leaders struggled to find homes for them all. Abu Tor became the new neighborhood for scores of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa. The new families came from Iran, Morocco and Tunisia. They began to take over homes right on the barbed wire border separating Israel from No Man’s Land and the Jordanian soldiers beyond.
    Waiting for Santa