52 Hours of Peace

All year long, peace is mocked in the Holy Land. Across the barbed-wire frontier that divides Palestine with a crown of thorns, Arab legionnaires in red-and-white-checked kefiyas and Jewish soldiers in British-style khaki eye each other warily, fingers on triggers. By night in Arab border hamlets, villagers playing backgammon in the coffee houses hush their voices the better to hear the stealthy pad of an approaching "reprisal" patrol. In the white Israeli houses shaped like sugar cubes, newcomers to Israel anxiously tack grenade-proof netting across the window frames for protection against Arab-hurled "mosquitoes."

This week in Jerusalem, spiritual capital of three great faiths, hatred is scheduled to take a 52-hour moratorium. As in years past, Moslem and Jew will lay aside their guns so that the Christian world may celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace. Early Christmas Eve, at bullet-pitted Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem, a joyous and expectant caravan begins to form on the Jewish side. These are 3,000 Christians who live in Israel--most of them Arabs and all but a handful Catholics--cut off all year from their kinfolk by the Arab-Israeli war. They yell greetings to their impatient families on the other side; then the moment comes: the gate opens.

The pilgrims journey to the Grotto where Christ was born, and then off to Christmas dinners with families and friends whom they see only once every year. An official of the Bank Leumi Lisrael at Mandelbaum Gate just this once legally exchanges Jordanian dinars for Israeli lirot. The pilgrim, returning 52 hours later, is allowed to carry into Israel Jordan food, which is ordinarily' confiscated. Then the gate clangs shut, and the passageway once more becomes a barrier.

Each Christmas Eve the members of Jerusalem's diplomatic corps gather, gorgeous in cocked hats, plumes and silver swords, and retrace the starlit route of the Magi from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. They climax the occasion with midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity.

But the route of the Wise Men is today a deadly pilgrimage that winds through mine-strewn roads and olive groves. So on the morning before Christmas Eve, Jordan and Israeli soldiers, forgetting their hostility, carefully remove their own mines, and fill in their tank traps. Then together the hostile soldiers stretch hundreds of yards of white tape along the narrow, unlit road to guide the Christians. At dark, as the lights of the procession approach, waiting Israel and Jordanian armored cars turn on their searchlights and shout an official "Merry Christmas" to the caravan of dignitaries. From the groves of olive trees on the side, Jews and Arabs watch the Christians' ceremony.

Later, if the night is still, shepherds and soldiers on both sides hear the men at the shrine singing "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace . . ."

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