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"All for want of a nail," as the saying goes, teaches that at times events which seem, at first glance, to be insignificant and trivial are of far- reaching significance. The story of the
Jerusalem cease-fire line seems to prove the truth of this adage. This was that section of the cease-fire line that divided Jerusalem for nineteen years (from November 1948 to June 1967), extending from the village of Beit Safafa in the south to the Batei Pagi neighborhood, close to the Shmuel Ha-navi quarter, in the north. On November 30, 1948, a cease-fire agreement was signed by two officers,
Lieutenant-Colonel Moshe Dayan, Jerusalem District Commander, and Lieutenant-Colonel Abdullah al-Tal, the commander of the Jordanian forces in the city, after an entire year of bloody battles. The officers spread out the 1:20,000 scale map of Jerusalem on the dusty floor of an abandoned house in the Musrara quarter and drew two lines on it: Dayan demarcated the Israeli positions with a red grease
pencil, and al-Tal marked the Jordanian
positions using a green pencil. No one
gave any thought to the fact that the
pencil lines used to delineate the
positions, 3-4 millimeters in width,
represented an area about 60-80 meters
wide. Those present were not bothered
by the fact that in some places the
pencil skipped over a rough patch on
the floor and left unmarked areas, since everyone was certain that this was merely a temporary agreement, one that would speedily be replaced by the
permanent accords. Reality, however, as to prove different, and the armistice agreements that were signed in Rhodes six months later established that the Dayan-al-Tal map was the sole binding document. The carelessly drawn and inaccurate lines suddenly became an inflexible principle that dictated the life of the city for the next nineteen years. The thick lines that had been drawn on the map split neighborhoods, streets, and even houses, with the unclear marking becoming the source of disagreements, misunderstandings, problems, and conflicts between the sides. The wide areas between the demarcation lines became no-man's land, most of which was mined, with entry forbidden to both sides. As the years passed, the borderline turned into a series of fortifications. Israeli and Jordanian outposts were established along it, some of which were given picturesque names such as "the House with Yellow Shutters," "Lulav"
(palm branch), "Lion," "the Monkeys," etc. During this tour we will walk along the central segment of the cease-fire line, the physical traces of which have been obliterated almost in their entirety, and we will learn of the way of life, the incidents, and the tension
experienced by the residents of the area until the Six-Day War.
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