Exodus - Leon Uris [144]
There was white in the great red beard of Barak and there was white in the black hair of Sarah as they stood before each other at the door to her cottage. He held her in his arms very softly, and in that moment all the hardships of the past few years faded away. His little Sarah took him by the hand. She limped slightly as she led him into the cottage. A scrappy, strapping, bright-eyed three-year-old boy looked up at him curiously.
Barak knelt before the boy and held him up in his powerful hands.
“My son,” Barak whispered, “my son.”
“Your son ... Ari,” she said.
Chapter Twelve
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION was ratified by fifty nations.
During World War I the Yishuv population had been cut in half by the Turkish terror. In the wake of the war a new rash of pogroms broke out in eastern Europe.
The times that followed were exciting and vital for the Yishuv. The Third Aliyah was pouring in to escape persecution and filling the decimated ranks of the Yishuv.
For years the Zion Settlement Society had had its eye on the Jezreel Valley which made up the entire southern Galilee. It was mostly swampland with but a few poverty-stricken Arab villages. Most of the Jezreel belonged to a single effendi family, the Sursuks, who lived in Beirut. The Turks would not permit the Jews to buy into the Jezreel, but with the coming of the British and the lifting of land restrictions Barak Ben Canaan and two other land buyers traveled to Beirut and purchased an area from Haifa to Nazareth. The great Jezreel purchase was the first land deal of such magnitude in Palestine and the first one backed entirely by the funds of world Jewry. The Jezreel opened great opportunities for the establishment of more kibbutzim.
Old-time kibbutzniks unselfishly left their farms to help found new kibbutzim. Akiva and Ruth, and their newborn daughter Sharona, left the relative comfort of their beloved Shoshanna to help build a new kibbutz just north of Rosh Pinna. The settlement was named Ein Or, the Fountain of Light.
At last the Jews shared part of Barak Ben Canaan’s dream. Land was purchased deep in the Huleh Valley near the Syrian and Lebanese borders. They even farmed at his hill and built a kibbutz, the village of Giladi, close by. Barak’s old friend and comrade, Joseph Trumpledor, went up to Kfar Giladi to handle security.
Along with the growth of farming, Tel Aviv and the other cities grew. Jews began buying homes in Haifa above the city on Mount Carmel. In Jerusalem there was building beyond the old Walled City as the needs of the Yishuv called for larger headquarters and the religious elements joined with the Zionists in the spirit of redemption.
The British administration made many reforms. Roads were built. Schools and hospitals were erected. Justice came to the courts. Balfour himself traveled to Jerusalem and on Mount Scopus lay the cornerstone of a new Hebrew university.
To govern the Yishuv, the Jews elected a representative body. The Yishuv Central was a quasi-government to speak for the Jews, deal with the Arabs and British, and serve as a link to the Zion Settlement Society and to the world’s Zionists. The Yishuv Central and the Zion Settlement Society both moved to the new headquarters in Jerusalem.
Barak Ben Canaan, a senior respected citizen, was elected to the Yishuv Central, a position he held along with his work with the Zionists.
But there were ominous signs. Palestine was becoming the center of a gigantic power play.
The first act of this play was the publication of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, by which the French and the British sought to divide the Middle East between themselves. The paper was first discovered in the files of the Czar by Russian revolutionaries and published to embarrass the British and French.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement directly contradicted earlier British promises to grant independence to the Arabs. The Arabs felt betrayed. Despite British efforts to soothe the situation, Arab fears proved justified later when, at the