Crossing the Allenby Bridge

...My husband is a businessman who works in Syria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, so I couldn't come before...

...But if they want to go, b'sedr" (okay...

...Today, five and a half years later, the Allenby still lies broken in the Jordan, a rusting symbol of the 1967 War...

...That's a smart customs officer," murmured the mayor whose gifts had been taken apart...

...Hundreds of Arab visitors end up working on temporary jobs alongside Israeli Jews and Arabs, especially in the construction industry, although in theory they are not supposed to seek employment...

...So long as these conditions are met, even former Jordanian cabinet ministers and legislators may be granted entrance...

...The customs control is probably the most thorough in the world...

...For it is impossible to guarantee that no terrorists are slipping through with the peaceable visitors, or that no illegal goods are being smuggled into Israel...

...Long before the 1947-48 War, Arabs were bringing their sick to doctors and nurses of the Jewish towns and settlements...

...Next the visitors proceed to the windows where their permits are stamped according to their destinations...

...Just say we all want peace...

...How do we get peace...

...These are really ambassadors, not of Israel's diplomatic policy, but of Israel's normal way of life...

...In total, 200,000 left over the next several months...

...Israel's foreign ministry focuses particularly on visiting students, organizing one-day tours to universities, factories, and kibbutz farms...

...I can go back and forth any time,'" he told me...

...Furthermore, Arabs residing in a third country, for example the U.S., Great Britain, or Germany, may apply for visas in the ordinary way at local Israeli consulates...

...Its approaches are surrounded by barbed wire, forming a sort of no man's land, to protect passers-by from the danger of unexploded mines...

...Because how can we live, my father here and us in Kuwait...

...Other visitors, sharing the almost mystical belief common among Arabs that Jewish doctors can cure anything, head immediately for treatment...

...The sons, who took jobs near Kuwait after completing their education at the University of Cairo, had last seen their parents in 1966...

...Every morning several busloads of Arabs pull up to the bridge on the East Bank...

...Dadya classified it all as merchandise, and the protesting merchant was marched off to pay the full duty plus a heavy fine...

...The "Open Bridges" program is administered by the military government for Judea and Samaria, which reports that it has "thousands of applications from Arabs" who want to immigrate and settle in Israel...

...Like figures in a newsreel played in reverse, Arabs by the tens of thousands have been crossing back over the river from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the Israeli-administered West Bank...

...I'm sure you're a very good man," Meir Dadya, the customs officer and a veteran of the Six-Day War, told the mayor in Arabic...

...One attractive, dark-eyed mother of three from Amman, wearing a fashionable blue dress, purple sweater and white pumps, was radiant with expectation: "We will spend 10 days with my parents in the Gaza Strip...

...EXPERIMENT IN 'PEACE' Crossing the Allenby Bridge BY GERTRUDE SAMUELS Jericho On June 9, 1967, a day before the Six-Day War ended, retreating Arab forces blew up the Allenby Bridge, 20 miles east of Jericho, leaving its steel superstructure shattered and half-submerged in the Jordan river...

...We want real peace," they told me...

...Last year over 164,000 Arab men, women and childrenfrom not only Jordan, but Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Syria too visited Israel on permits allowing them to stay an average of three weeks with their families in the occupied territories...

...Then they move on to the medical hut for a health-and-innoculations examination...

...I don't think they love us," the officer continued...

...Looking around at his fellow travelers, he declared, "It's my sincere belief that Arabs and Israelis have a right to live freely and independently, with equal rights...

...Just 50 yards away Jordan has built a new bridge...

...Every West Bank Arab, resident and visitor, may freely travel the mainland of Israel today without additional permits or technicalities...

...A small, inconspicuous patrol of Jordanian troops signals the Israeli soldiers on the other side, and the buses proceed over the short, wooden span, never beyond rifle range of both patrols...

...The Palestinians feel like second-rate citizens in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and Syria...

...As one highly placed officer put it, "What we're doing here infiltrates...

...The family originally fled from Beer-sheba in the 1947-48 War...

...Despite the high volume of traffic over the "Open Bridges," there has been little turmoil or subversive activity in the Arab areas, and Israel deliberately keeps its military presence to a minimum...

...As they wait in line, the noise level rises with their growing excitement...

...I'm so gratefulthat is the word...

...No solution is apparent at present...

...Yousef Mohammed Ghannam, the 49-year-old mayor of Deir Dib-wan, a village near Ramallah, was returning from his fifth trip outside since the occupation...

...Many thousands more came on four-month visas that are often extended, particularly for students and merchants...

...It was quickly discovered that he had gotten a fellow passenger to bring some things in for him as "gifts...

...Nobody, regardless of wealth or position, is exempt...

...I see this as a firm threshold for peace...

...Some are treated free...

...Jordan, in turn, welcomed the opportunity to maintain some control over the West Bank Arabs, whom it claims as its own...

...The "state of peace" that prevails at Allenby stands in sharp contrast to the state of war that continues elsewhere in the Middle East, punctuated by Arab terrorist attacks and envelope bombs, and Israeli retaliation raids...

...I heard the same sentiment repeated all day, especially by the women...

...As a security measure, visitors from the East Bank are admitted by invitation only: A resident of the Israeli-occupied area has to request an entry visa for a relative or friend who wants to come over, and the application must guarantee the visitor's peaceful intentions...

...In this day and age, this should be possible...

...After their bus arrives at customs, the passengers pour out, claim their baggage, and enter a fenced-off enclosure where they queue up for a preliminary inspection of identity papers and permits by an Israeli soldier...

...The visitors get the same pay as Israelis, $4.50-$7.50 a day, depending on their skills...

...A graduate of Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania, and the American University of Beirut, he once worked as the manager of a handbag factory in Brooklyn...

...In fact, besides the new Allenby Bridge on the Jericho-Amman Highway, the Jordanians have replaced the demolished Damya Bridge on the Nablus-Amman Road...

...Some were dressed in flowing white and colored robes, others in modern Western clothes...

...Gabriel Pa-don, consul for public information at the Israeli Consulate in New York, says, "Hardly a day passes without Arabs applying to consulates for visas to visit their relatives back home...

...Every piece of baggage, clothing, jewelry, gifts and toys is meticulously inspected...

...He stood quietly by while the customs officer frisked each item, took the watches and the clock apart (and put them back together again), plunged a penknife into the heels of the man's shoes, and dismantled the doll, carefully unscrewing its head, arms and legs, undressing it and examining every nook...

...Gertrude Samuels, a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, has written two books on Israel...

...My personal hope is that all the parties concerned Palestinian Arabs, Israelis, the rest of the Arab world, and the United Stateswill find a way to work together for a peaceful solution...

...All year round, the buses come and go, and rarely make headlines...

...I'll be frank with you: We do have to be more careful with the students...

...With their belongings rolled up and piled on their heads, white keffiyed men, beshawled women, bedraggled children, and merchants in Western dress made their way across a temporary footbridge rigged along the side of the sunken Allenby...

...But I think the extent of their enmity is being diminished as they learn to know us personally, and they see that the myths they've been fed about us don't match the reality...

...Following a personal search, the visitors file out of the compound to the buses and taxis (driven by West Bank Aiabs) waiting to take them on their way...

...I started talking to Ahmed Sirhan, a 27-year-old-Moslem clerk, black-suited, black-haired and mustached, from Abu Dhabi...

...The Arabs are glad for the chance to make some money before going home, and Israel is happy to have the workersAnd the good will...

...There are some Israelis, of course, who fear and deplore the "Open Bridges" policy...

...There is water and shade...

...That afternoon I photographed countless Arabs fleeing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank...

...Last year the Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem reported that 10 per cent of its patients were Arab, including many "from the administered [occupied] territories and through Jordan via the Allenby Bridge...

...But these are the calculated risks that we prefer to take in the interest of creating a climate for peaceful relations...

...to be here...

...Though he had liked his Jewish employers, he said, "I decided in 1963 to retire from the American rush-rush-life...

...I watched as one mayor returning from a courtesy call on King Hussein opened his suitcase containing, besides clothes, a couple of pounds of mixed nuts, chewing gum, shaving cream, a few tape casettes, three wristwatches, an alarm clock (which was ringing), and a large doll in frilly dress and red shoes...

...But you know people have had dynamite pasted in the middle of this kind of thing...

...Some can hardly believe the industrial progress they see, far surpassing anything they know in Jordan...

...On the Israeli side, a stone plaque reads: "To the three paratroopers who fell on duty 23 June 1968...

...General Dayan deeply believed that keeping the border open would foster "bridges of peace" between the Arab and Israeli peoples...

...Many have not seen their relatives for years...

...We provide a peaceful bridge to the Arab countries...

...An Israeli soldier, handing babies to their mothers struggling along the roped-off walkway, said with a shrug, "We don't force anyone to do this...

...But this hope is very far-fetched...

...All travelers crossing the Allenby Bridge go through a strict clearance procedure...

...Like other tourists, hundreds of them flock to view the Shalom Tower in Tel Aviv, shop in the streets of Jerusalem and Haifa, go swimming at lovely Natanya Beach, and enjoy the famous St...

...Al Ahram [Egypt's most influential newspaper] reports that these visitors are more important to Israel than guns and tanks...

...A poster informs them: "Check with the police with your permits, and then with your luggage at customs...

...they can fly directly to Israel like any other tourist to visit their families, and many hundreds have...

...In addition, travelers from the Arab states must have valid passports and use public rather than private transport...

...A moment later, Dadya spied an Arab merchant of textiles and children's clothes, well-known from his many crossings, apparently carrying less than usual in his cases...

...The majority will associate mostly with fellow Arabs during their stay, yet many will find themselves coming into ever-widening contact with Israeli Jews...

...Her soft-spoken words drew approving nods from those around her...

...During a recent tour of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a group of 25 Arab students were awed by an exhibition depicting the development of Arabic poetry, literature and history...

...one of the guests burst out, "To come to Israel, the enemy of the Arabs, and see how you render this service to Arab culture this is too much...

...Yet the prevailing opinion was perhaps best expressed by a government spokesman who ruefully confided...

...We close our eyes," a government spokesman explained to me, "because it's convenient to get the labor for jobs where there are shortages and the labor exchanges can't supply workers...

...He and his brother, Ramadan, 26, a swarthily handsome school teacher, were going to visit their parents in the Gaza Strip, crossing Israel to get there...

...It's been four years since I saw them, and I'm so excited...

...They come to rejoin their families and friends they left behind, to work, or even to visit Israel as ordinary tourists...

...Many have certainly been trained by Fatah [the guerrilla movement with headquarters in Cairo] and are potential terrorists...

...The amount of freedom they see here freedom of movement, of speech, freedom to criticize the government without being punishedis for most of them a surprise...

...But it's not in our hands, is it...

...He deftly reassembled and dressed the doll...

...This "Open Bridges" policy was initiated by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, a strategist with sabra charisma who knows the Arab mind as well as the Arabic language...

...Peter's fish-and-chips lunch in old Acre...

...most are paid for by UNRWA [the United Nations Relief and Work Agency], with Hadassah and the Israel Defense Forces making up the difference...

...Look, no occupation is pleasant or accepted by the people," he continued, "and the sooner it is terminated, the better...

...He also felt it was in Israel's interest to normalize life for the Arabs in the occupied territories and provide a kind of safety valve for the pressures and frustrations that could build up among those who feared being cut off from the rest of the Arab worldAnd from their investments there...