ABSTRACT
In June 1967, a few days after the liberation of Jerusalem, the gates of the Old City were opened, allowing people from all over the country to come and visit the Old City. My grandmother, the late Hannah Frumkin, had waited for this day in anxious expectation like many other Jews, but more so as a former resident of the Old City going back to visit her childhood home. I accompanied her on that visit and she, finding her way with the greatest of ease through the Old City she remembered so well, brought us to the courtyard where her family had lived: the 'Lily Courtyard'. There she met her former neighbours from the el-Husseini family. Their reunion was very moving, filled with memories and stories of years gone by, but utterly lacking in any sense of real friendship. In fact, this was the first and last time these two families would meet. Up to the summer of 1967, as a child growing up in Jerusalem, just a stone's throw from the border in the nearby Mamilla Quarter, the conflict between the Arabs and us seemed to me to be no more than a neighbourhood quarrel, since there was a clearly defined border separating the Jews in West Jerusalem from the Arabs in the East, a border symbolized for us by the Jordanian Legionnaires we could see manning the Old City walls. There were other Arabs, 'good Arabs', like those living in the village of Abu Ghosh on the western approaches to Jerusalem, where we sampled Middle Eastern delicacies at the Nirvan restaurant situated just above what was then the main highway to Jerusalem. It was during that visit to the Old City with my grandmother, that I understood for the first time that the conflict between the Arabs and us was not a dispute between neighbouring states or even neighbouring peoples, but rather a conflict in our own - common - backyard. The thought of Haj Amin el-Husseini 1 and my grandfather sharing the same courtyard toilet has percolated through my consciousness over the years, until it developed into the realization that the paramount problem facing the State of Israel was to work towards achieving peace at home with the Palestinians, and that the conflicts between us and our neighbouring countries were of secondary importance. Moreover, it became clear to me that domestic peace is much more difficult to achieve than any other.
