Arabs, Armenians, Catholics
319
When Weingarten finally left, it was only an hour before
daybreak of the 14th, the last day of the British mandate. Back
through the cobblestone alleys bristling with armed men,
through the blockaded streets, and into the Jewish quarter
went Mordachi Weingarten. He called a council of his elders
and Haganah commanders.
"The Armenians are not Arabs," he told them. "They will
fight fiercely. I have seen that they are well armed and have
many men. If we fight them we will dissipate our strength and
weaken ourselves against the Arabs. We arc not strong enough
to fight on two fronts." This was hard military common sense.
"Our quarrel is not with the Armenians. To their peril, they
have refused to allow the Arabs to take positions in their
monastery against us. Let us not fight our friends, but the
Arab enemy who would massacre us if he could."
And so, while the whole of Jerusalem, save for a handful of
Armenians, slept, the Jews withdrew from the Armenian sector they had occupied. From the deserted homes they took
with them all the food they could find. It was a windfall that
helped them carry on for another two weeks.
No one could have foreseen the consequences had the
Patriarch failed and the Jews occupied the Armenian quarter,
thus placing them in control of roughly one third of the populated area of the Old City. It may be argued that this lone
Armenian helped save the Old City from strife that surely
would have enveloped it, converting many of the holy places
into battlegrounds.
Standing at the edge of Vank Square, I took a final look at
my people, at old and battered folk gathered at the well for
their water rations, at the children, at the ripped walls and
damaged belfry of the Cathedral of St. James where a "Davidka" had crashed, at the house shattered by the Arab hoodlum's mortars. I saw little Anna Kouyoumjian tugging at
Akabi, her tiny sister whose arm, struck by shrapnel, was
wrapped in washed-over bandages. I had met their father,