Bittersweet Memories for 2 Families : House a Symbol of Chasm Between Arabs, Israelis

The stone house stands among gas stations, greasy snack bars and repair shops at the edge of town. It seems out of place in this seedy, noisy neighborhood, and its walled garden seems even more so, with its lawn and lemon tree.

Yet it is a sadly appropriate setting for what is a monument to the conflict that rages in this land.

The current tenants of the house knew nothing, until Thursday, of the love and hate and hopelessness that it represents. Dalia Landau, a Bulgarian Jewish immigrant who grew up in the house, never told them. And they did not know Bashir Khayri, the Palestinian Arab lawyer who lived here before Landau, who is both her friend and her enemy.

But because Khayri was expelled from Israel to Lebanon on Wednesday by the Israeli government, Landau wrote an open letter to him that appeared in the Jerusalem Post--in the same Thursday issue that reported Khayri’s expulsion.

In the letter and in a subsequent interview, Landau, a teacher, told how her life and Khayri’s had become intertwined. Still, she said, the chasm between their peoples is so wide that even two people with an exceptional desire to bridge it were unable to do so.

Khayri’s brother-in-law confirmed the broad outlines of the story.

Landau first met Khayri soon after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, she recalled in the letter. She was a year old in 1948 when her family joined 50,000 other Bulgarian Jews in immigrating to the new state of Israel. The Ramla house was then classified as “abandoned property,” and her family took it over.

It was the house where Khayri was born and where he had lived until, at the age of 6, he and his family were forced out by the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. They moved to Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, which from 1948 to 1967 was part of Jordan.

When Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967, it gave Khayri and two relatives their first opportunity in almost 20 years to visit the former family lands in Ramla, and there they met Landau and her family. It was, she recalled, “my first encounter with Palestinians.”

Khayri invited Landau to visit him in Ramallah, and she accepted.

‘Surrounded by Hospitality’

“I found myself surrounded by hospitality,” she recalled. “We talked for hours and established a warm personal connection” despite clear differences in their political views.

From the first, her friendship with Khayri changed her life. She began to understand, she wrote, that “the lemon tree which yielded so much fruit and gave us so much delight lived in other people’s hearts, too.”

“The spacious house with its high ceilings, big windows and large grounds was no longer just an ‘Arab house,’ a desirable form of architecture,” she went on. “It had faces behind it now. The walls evoked other people’s memories and tears.”

Myths Melt Away

Myths began to melt away. For example, Landau wrote in the letter, “we were all led to believe that the Arab population of Ramla and Lod had run away before the advancing Israeli army in 1948, leaving everything behind in a rushed and cowardly escape.”

“This belief reassured us,” she continued. “It was meant to prevent guilt and remorse. But after 1967, I met not only you but also an Israeli Jew who had personally participated in the expulsion (of Arabs) from Ramla and Lod.”

At about that time, Khayri was sentenced to 15 years in an Israeli prison for planting a bomb that killed several civilians.

“My heart aches for those murdered even now,” Landau wrote, and in the interview she said, “There is a side of me that is angry with him.”

‘A Moral Burden’

Years passed, Landau married and her parents died. She and her husband, the information director for a religious peace group here called Oz veShalom, were now the owners of the Ramla house. But “I felt this moral burden the whole time we lived there,” she said. “I felt there was something unresolved.”

She emphasized that she does not feel guilty because Israel won the 1948 War of Independence. She said that if the Arabs had accepted a U.N. plan to partition Palestine, the Ramla house would still belong to the Khayri family. But she does feel, she said, that the expulsion was wrong.

“Guilt has a bad name today,” she said, “as if to feel guilty is to be sick in your soul. I just don’t believe in that. I think human beings who are not conscious of guilt are not fully human. The point is to turn guilt into responsibility, not to wallow in it.”

To her, responsibility meant somehow compensating Khayri for his home, she said.

“I realized it would be considered a crazy thing to do,” she acknowledged, but nonetheless she sought Khayri out when he was released from prison in 1984.

Compensation Refused

As a West Bank resident, he could not legally move back into his old house. He refused compensation. Finally, he suggested that the property be turned into a kindergarten for Israeli Arab children in the area.

Landau liked the idea, but the problem of ownership arose. Khayri wanted the property turned over to some Arab religious institution, but “we felt that we couldn’t do this because of the threatening implications for Jews in this land,” Landau said.

She and her husband are Zionists, and to return property within Israel’s pre-1967 borders to Arab sovereignty would be “threatening” to untold thousands of other Israeli Jews who live on formerly Arab land. “We wanted to be inspiring, not threatening,” she said. “And if we threaten Jews it would not do any good.”

Joint Trust Proposed

As an alternative, Landau suggested that the property be turned over to a trust jointly controlled by Arabs and Jews, a trust that could then rent the property to some Arab religious institution. But Khayri rejected the idea as too impermanent, she related. Symbolically, it was important to him that the property revert to Arab ownership.

The last time the Landaus went to visit Khayri, they learned that he had been placed under a six-month administrative detention order. By the time he was released, the Landaus were on an extended trip abroad.

After keeping the house empty for two years, at considerable expense, Landau rented it to the present tenants without telling them any of the property’s history.

Now, Khayri has been expelled, and Landau sees the fact that they could not resolve the issue of the house they both knew as their childhood home as “a reflection of the whole situation.”

Gaps in Relationship

In fact, she said, there was a deep gap between them all along. Khayri is a supporter of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist group that advocates replacing the Jewish Israeli state with a secular, democratic state taking in all of what used to be Palestine.

As much as she deplores Khayri’s expulsion as an “utterly stupid action” by her government, Landau faults her exiled Palestinian friend for his adherence to what she sees as a radical political ideology that denies the right of Jews to a Jewish state.

“As long as we experience this total rejection, you and your people will not achieve your own independence,” she wrote in the letter.

Moderation Urged

In exile, she said, Khayri has a chance to assume a more important leadership role among his people, and she ended her letter with a plea that he use it to moderate the struggle.

“This is the kind of war that no one can win, and either both peoples will achieve liberation or neither will,” she wrote. “Our childhood memories, yours and mine, are intertwined in a tragic way. If we cannot find means to transform that tragedy into a shared blessing, our clinging to the past will destroy our future.”

On Thursday, as Landau talked with a reporter from a hospital bed--she is pregnant--she expressed concern that her unborn child, as well as Khayri’s small daughter and son, may grow up in a world in which their peoples are even more separated by hate and distrust.

A Journey Home

In her letter, Landau recalled an “unforgettable” time when Khayri brought his blind father back to the Ramla house.

“He touched the rugged stones of the house,” she said. “He then asked if the lemon tree was still in the back yard. He was led to the abundant tree, which he had planted many years before. He caressed it and stood silent. Tears were rolling down his face.

“Many years later, after the death of your father, your mother told me that, whenever he felt troubled at night and could not sleep, he would pace up and down your rented apartment in Ramallah, holding a shriveled lemon in his hand.

“It was the same lemon my father had given him on that visit.”