The Holy City
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and Jew, were doing so. Dcir Aboutor was the central Arab
headquarters outside the Old City of Jerusalem. More than
two hundred soldiers were living here in the homes of Arabs
who had fled.
Early the next morning Moustafa and I took a bus for the
Old City, which was held by the Arabs. One could walk the
distance, but it meant passing the Jewish Yemin Moshe section outside the city walls. The Arabs had blown up many of
its houses and the Haganah forces, in retaliation, blasted away
at Arab trucks passing over the roads it commanded. Buses
and taxis, however, were not molested. Buses were armorplated, with tiny peepholes for windows. The armor was more
psychological than practical, because a bullet fired at a hundred yards could easily penetrate it. To my surprise, Arabs
here not only respected but feared Jewish fighters—a far cry
from the bravado I had met in Egypt.
We entered the Old City through Jaffa Gate—one of the
seven entrances cut into the great rectangular wall. Moustafa
took me directly to the offices of the Arab Higher Committee,
where I received an identity card. Then, through twisting
cobblestone alleys that passed for streets, lined with bazaars
and tiny cubbyhole workshops, threading our way among peddlers, donkeys, bootblacks, children, natives, walking over the
waste and refuse of centuries littering the Via Dolorosa—the
road that Jesus traveled on the way to Golgotha—we reached
Raudat el Maaref. This, a former police station, was now Arab
military headquarters in the Old City. How strangely Biblical
history repeated itself, I thought. On this very site Pontius
Pilate had made his headquarters 1,900 years ago. It was to
this spot that Christ was brought in chains before the Roman
governor. This was the first of fourteen stations of the Way
of the Cross. A few dozen yards away He was scourged.
All this was of absorbing interest to me as a Christian from
America, but the filth, the cold commercialism, of the Old
City merchants tarnished the aura of holiness that I had attached to the Holy City. One could buy hand-grenades, bul-