A Street Divided by Dion Nissenbaum

outhouse. “Does it mean that this building will remain without a toilet?” 23
    No, the Israeli colonel could not accept this.
    â€œOnce it was agreed that normal life will proceed there, that means that such an elementary thing as a toilet is entirely within the authority of the people living in that building to repair and to change.” 24
    The Jordanians disagreed. Abbasi said no deal between the two countries allowed people in No Man’s Land to build extra rooms on their houses, no matter the size. If Jordan allowed Israel to repair the toilet, it would set a precedent for Israelis to build dozens of buildings that would be perfect new sniper positions for their soldiers.
    â€œIf this kind of work is allowed to continue for a few months more, we will have 25,000 annexes to one house,” he said at a March emergency meeting at the UN office. “This is the intention of those who built up this agreement, and I am sure that you know it.” 25
    On March 14, the diplomats met to decide the outhouse’s fate. By a vote of two to one, the MAC condemned Israel for building the outhouse and called for its removal from No Man’s Land.
    â€œLet my concluding words be an earnest appeal to the parties to find a satisfactory solution which will prevent future similar situations with a view to preventing tension in this sensitive area,” said Lt. Col. M. C. Stanaway, an army officer from New Zealand who was then serving as chairman of the UN commission, at the close of the fourth hearing and 18 hours of arguing. 26
    For the Israelis this was a victory. The United Nations condemned the construction, but the outhouse remained standing.
    â€œWe used to draw up a balance-sheet of condemnations, and even evolved a kind of tactical strategy during these protest wars,” Israeli Gen. Uzi Narkiss wrote in his memoir. “I, of course, was fully aware that the real decision would be made not at the debating table of the MAC, but on the line itself, where the number of hands raised for or against would not decide the issue, but the number of Israeli civilians living permanently on the line, earning their living and raising their children.” 27
    Narkiss understood that having civilians like the Goelis, who were willing to put down roots on disputed land—what modern politicians would call “facts on the ground”—mattered more than placing soldiers on the border.
    â€œI will always remember a talk I had with a young officer early in my command,” he wrote. “I pointed out to him that his patrol passed a part of the line in one of the mixed quarters. ‘But we don’t need to demonstrate our presence there,’ he said innocently. ‘The Jewish children playing near the fence demonstrate the presence.’” 28
    It was a constant battle over inches. The inability to agree on what to do with the No Man’s Land meant that there was always new ground to fight over. It wasn’t just about toilets or sheep. One of the biggest fights of the time was over trees.
    â€œBulldozers Aren’t Machine Guns”
    Few people probably paid much attention to the small story on page three of the Jerusalem Post on August 15, 1957: “100,000 Trees for Jerusalem Border.”
    The story seemed to be a yawner, a little newspaper filler, about Israel’s latest tree-planting project.
    It was actually an early public salvo in another Arab-Israeli fight that would have to be settled by the UN Security Council.
    â€œOver 100,000 trees are to be planted this coming season near the ceasefire lines in Jerusalem,” the three-paragraph story began. “The trees will be planted by the Jewish National Fund [JNF], right up to the border from Talpiot to Abu Tor. Preparatory work for the planting is already being carried out at the site. The Forest Division of the Ministry of Agriculture has announced that over 20,000 dunhams [5,000 acres] of marginal lands unfit