Giving Muslims a Lift

With their Muslim brothers embroiled in the Iran-Iraq war, 4,700 Israeli Arabs feared that they would not be able to make the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca. Day after day they waited for buses to meet them at the Allenby Bridge spanning the Jordan River, the boundary between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to begin their 18-hour overland journey to the holy sites in Saudi Arabia. Finally, on the tenth day of their vigil, the first of 125 dusty vehicles rolled into view. War or no war, the hajj would go on.

The Israeli Arabs' pilgrimage was a small but stunning triumph over the dislocations of war and the sectarian antagonisms of the Middle East. To begin with, the buses were supplied by Israel's implacable foe Iran, which must have needed the vehicles for the war effort back home. Forced to bypass Iraq, which provides the most direct route to Jordan, the drivers headed north to Turkey. There they were delayed for a week because the border was closed. Finally allowed to pass through Turkey, they were held up for four more days by the Syrians. As Iranians in a hostile Arab world, the drivers were probably lucky to have reached the Allenby Bridge at all, much less in two weeks. Said Benjamin Gur-Arieh, Prime Minister Menachem Begin's adviser on Arab affairs: "I'm not sure I would have driven those buses through Jordan. Maybe the [pro-Iraqi] Jordanians would have confiscated the buses and turned the drivers into soldiers."

No other Muslim country was willing to supply transportation for the Israeli faithful, who until 1978 were not allowed to make the hajj because they were citizens of the Jewish state. "The Iranians want to give the impression that they are the patrons of all Islam," said Gur-Arieh. Indeed, the pilgrims expressed profound gratitude to the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini for his religious diplomacy, despite the fact that he is a leader of the Shi'ite branch of Islam while the Israeli Arabs are rival Sunnis. "Even if they cut my throat," said one pilgrim, "I'm for Khomeini."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.