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The Repeatedly Promised Land is what Karl called Palestine, and he was not referring to the pledges of Yahweh. With the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British Crown promised the formation of an Israelite national home in Palestine, on what authority one could only wonder. In Karl’s opinion, “It was propaganda, merely. The British knew how many German Jews were fighting for our nation and they hoped to sap our loyalty.” Only a year or so earlier, the secret Sykes-Picot agreement had guaranteed the French a goodly share in the region, even as Colonel Lawrence was promising the Arabs independence in return for their alliance with the British during the war against Turkey and Germany.
In an effort to untangle this knotted skein, the British considered establishing a New Zion in one of their African colonies. Uganda was a healthy, fertile, and beautiful land, and the Jewish leader Herzl was inclined to accept the offer. The idea was dropped for a variety of reasons. “You see, when the Great War began, only Germany manufactured acetone, which is needed to make TNT,” Karl told me. “There was an immigrant Russian living in England when the war broke out—a chemist named Weizma
Now the League of Nations had given Palestine to Great Britain as a protectorate to be dealt with as His Majesty’s Government thought expedient. “Russian Zionists call it ‘a land without people for a people without land,’ ” Karl said, “but nearly a million people live there, Agnes. A tenth are Jews, and half again as many Christians, but three-quarters are Arab, and they will never give that wasteland up. It may be awful but it is theirs, and they value it above their children. They proved to Turkey that they would kill or die for it, and now that Lawrence has encouraged Arab nationalism?” Karl shrugged. “They will feel the presence of British colonialists and Zionist settlers as needles in their living flesh. The irony is that Palestine is such a desolation, and yet so many have desired to possess it.”
Looking out the window of the train, I couldn’t imagine why.
Until you see Palestine, Karl told me, you ca
“The Arabs, too, have a legend that explains the stones of Palestine,” Karl said. “When Allah made the world, he put all the stones that were to be used across the entire earth into two bags and gave them to an angel to distribute over the land. While the angel was flying above Palestine, one bag broke.”
And nowhere were those stones more in evidence than in Gaza.
Near the seacoast, the town was one of the largest in Palestine, which wasn’t saying a great deal. Fifteen water wells rendered the location habitable in what is otherwise a desert. Those wells have made it a prize along the route of every invader from Tutmoses III to Allenby. In its newest cemetery, three thousand British graves bore witness to its importance in the Great War.
Of course, no city is at its best near its railroad tracks, but Gaza truly was the most complete municipal horror I ever looked upon. From behind dusty glass we saw fly-ridden and filthy children standing along the right of way and between mud-brick hovels, all of which were in a state of utter dilapidation. I remember thinking that the biblical Samson might be counted fortunate to have been rendered eyeless during his time in Gaza. There was nothing beautiful, nothing gentle, nothing delightful in that terrible place. There was nothing thriving, nothing unstinted excepting only stones and fury. Those, Gaza had in howling abundance.
The children’s pebbles bounced harmlessly off the windows, and it seemed that this attack might be nothing worse than schoolboy horseplay. In a matter of seconds, however, the boys were lost in a huge mass of grown men ru
Next to me, Lord Trenchard conveyed icy disapproval by compressing his thin lips into a tighter line. Chewing on a spent cigar, Winston laid aside his pen. Clementine stopped reading. “Not again,” she sighed, looking more a
“I blame Shanklin,” Winston rumbled cheerfully. “There’s a riot every time she takes me somewhere.”
Sergeant Thompson appeared, slid back the compartment door, and motioned us away from the windows. A moment later, he made way for Mutt and Jeff. These were the two Palestinian police officers Thompson was counting on to recognize Arab ringleaders, and he deferred to them now.
Mutt bashed out the remaining window glass with his elbow. Jeff leaned forward with something in his hand. I shrank away, expecting him to fire on the mob. To our astonishment, he held not a pistol but a camera! He was taking photographs—God knows why, unless it was to build a case against the assassin he expected to succeed in killing Churchill.
Snarling, with his own pistol drawn, Thompson reached past Mutt and hauled Jeff out of the compartment with his free hand, all the while threatening to throw both policemen to the (French) wolves and take a (French) photograph of their (French) bodies to send to their (French) widows.
Lawrence arrived a moment later. In the corridor just beyond our compartment, he and Thompson discussed the situation in low voices, the sergeant tense, the colonel unperturbed.
“You can’t be serious!” Thompson cried suddenly. “I’m not letting him off the train in this hellhole!”
“It’s all arranged,” Lawrence said mildly.
“You’re demented! Look at those people!”
We had slowed to a stop in a sort of public square with the station platform on one side and a large mosque opposite. Lawrence braced himself against the doorjamb and leaned across us to peer through what was left of the carriage window, as if gauging Thompson’s assessment of the mob against his own.
The train was surrounded now, and the plaza was crammed to the edges with furious chanting men, all of whom seemed intent on murdering the odious “Shershill,” given the least opportunity.
“I think we’ll be all right,” Lawrence said peaceably. “We’re going to that big hall next to the mosque. Winston will speak. I will translate. The ladies can listen at the back, but—”
“You aren’t thinking of taking the women through that,” Thompson objected, astonished.
“They’ll be quite safe with me,” Lawrence said, and gave the sergeant no opportunity to argue. “Thompson, you will come with us as far as the door, but stay outside. Stand before it until we come out again. Stand without moving, understood?”
Thompson was bug-eyed with disbelief, but outranked. “Where do you want Mutt and Jeff?” he asked, jerking his chin toward the pair standing in the aisle. Both seemed quite shaken, and honestly? I’m not sure who frightened them more: the mob or Sergeant Thompson.
“They’re Sir Herbert’s worry,” Lawrence said dismissively.
“You don’t feel the need of them?” Thompson persisted. “They’re a couple of extra guns.”