Jerusalem. The Biography

1952.
    The Armistice, signed in April 1949 and supervised by the UN, who were based in the British Government House, divided Jerusalem: Israel received the west with an island of territory on Mount Scopus, whileAbdullah kept the Old City, eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. The agreement promised the Jews access to the Wall, the Mount of Olives cemetery and the Kidron Valley tombs but this was never honoured. Jews were not allowed to pray at the Wall for the next nineteen years, * and the tombstones in their cemeteries were vandalized.
    The Israelis and Abdullah both feared losing their halves of Jerusalem. The UN persisted in debating the internationalization of the city, so both sides occupied Jerusalem illegally and only two countries recognized Abdullah’s hold on the Old City. Weizmann’s chief of staff, George Weidenfeld, a young Viennese who had recently founded his own publishing house in London, launched a campaign to convince the world that Israel should keep west Jerusalem. On 11 December, Jerusalem was declared the capital of Israel.
    The Arab victor was Abdullah the Hasty, who, thirty-two years after the Arab Revolt, had finally won Jerusalem: ‘Nobody’, he said, ‘will take over Jerusalem from me unless I’m killed.’

1951–67
     
    KING OF JERUSALEM: BLOOD ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT
     
    ‘A fortified strip of barbed wire, minefields, firing positions and observation posts crossed [the city],’ wrote Amos Oz. ‘A concrete curtain came down and divided us from Sheikh Jarrah and the Arab neighbourhoods.’ There was often sniper fire: in 1954, nine people were killed in this way and fifty-four wounded. Even when the two sides cooperated, it was agonizing: in 1950, the UN mediated the feeding of the one tiger, one lion and two bears of the Biblical Zoo on Israeli-controlled Mount Scopus and officially explained that ‘Decisions had to be taken whether (a) Israeli money should be used to buy Arab donkeys to feed the Israeli lion or (b) whether an Israeli donkey should pass through Jordan-held territory to be eaten by the lion in question.’ Eventually the animals were escorted in a UN convoy through Jordanian territory to west Jerusalem.
    Across the barbed wire, the Nusseibehs mourned the Catastrophe: ‘I suffered what amounted to a nervous breakdown,’ admitted Hazem Nusseibeh. His nephew Sari missed ‘the English and Arab aristocrats, the free-wheeling parvenus, the middle-class tradesmen, the demimonde catering to soldiers, the rich blend of cultures, the bishops, Muslim clerics and black-bearded rabbis crowding the same streets’.
    In November, Abdullah was, bizarrely, crowned king of Jerusalem by the Coptic bishop – the first king to control the city since Frederick II. On 1 December, he had himself declared king of Palestine in Jericho, renaming his realm the United Kingdom of Jordan. The Husseinis and the Arab nationalists denounced Abdullah for his compromises and could not forgive him for being the only Arab to have succeeded in the Palestinian Catastrophe.
    The king turned to the Families of Jerusalem, who now enjoyed a strange renaissance. He offered Ragheb Nashashibi the premiership of Jordan. Nashashibi refused, but agreed to become a minister. The king also appointed him governor of the West Bank and Custodian of the Two Harams (Jerusalem and Hebron) as well as presenting him with aStudebaker car and the title ‘Ragheb Pasha’. (The Jordanians were still awarding Ottoman titles in the 1950s.) His dandyish nephew, Nassereddin Nashashibi, became royal chamberlain. * In a satisfying dismissal of the hated mufti, Abdullah officially sacked him and appointed Sheikh Husam al-Jarallah, the very man cheated of the title back in 1921.
    Abdullah was warned of assassination plots, but he always replied, ‘Until my day comes, nobody can harm me; when the day comes, no one can guard me.’ Whatever the dangers, Abdullah, now 69, was proud of his possession of Jerusalem. ‘When I was a boy,’ recalled his grandson Hussein, ‘my grandfather used to tell me that Jerusalem was one of the most beautiful cities in the world.’ As time went on he noticed that the king ‘grew to love Jerusalem more and more’. Abdullah was disappointed in his eldest son Talal, but he adored his grandson whom he educated to be king. During school holidays, they breakfasted together every day. ‘I’d become the son he always wanted,’ wrote Hussein.
    On Friday 20 July 1951, Abdullah drove to Jerusalem with