Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

The Mountain of Moriah…has become a source of dissension between my two sons, let their names here be recorded as Isaac and Ishmael.

Mount Moriah. The Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site. Tradition held that this spot, where the angel had saved Isaac, was the centre of the world, the Foundation Stone on which the universe had been created. The Jews of ancient times had built their temple here and, when it was destroyed by the Babylonians, they had built it again. All that was left now was the Western Wall, but this place remained the spiritual centre of the Jewish faith.

Yet Mount Moriah was holy to Muslims, too, those who traced their ancestry back to Ishmael. For them it was Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, the place where Mohammed had ascended to heaven on his winged horse. After Mecca and Medina, it was the Haram that was holiest.

…this land has become a source of dissension between my two sons; let their names here be recorded as Isaac and Ishmael. So have I thus declared in front of the judges that the Mount shall be bequeathed as follows…

Here the characters were faded, as if the carving had gone less deep. Guttman opened a desk drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass. Some of the formations were novel: they required checking against other texts, looking for repetitions that might suggest a specific local usage. More than two hours later and it was done.

When it was, Shimon Guttman gripped the desk in front of him. He needed to feel the solidity of the wood, its mundanity. For the enormity of these words was now apparent. Forget the fame and glory of an unprecedented historic discovery. What he had in front of him would change everything. People had fought for millennia over control of this holy site, all sides believing themselves to be the children of Abraham. At different times, Jews, Muslims and Christians had claimed it, each believing they were its true heirs. And now he, Shimon Guttman, held the document that would settle this question forever. All who regarded themselves as the descendents of Isaac and Ishmael, Jews and Muslims, would have to be bound by this, the word of the great father himself. It would change everything.

He fumbled for his phone before realizing that he didn’t know by heart the number he meant to call. He quickly logged onto the computer, searching for the website. He called up the contacts page and immediately dialled the number.

‘My name is Professor Shimon Guttman,’ he said, his voice parched. ‘I need to speak to the Prime Minister.’

RAMALLAH ,THE WEST BANK , THURSDAY , 8.30AM

Khalil al-Shafi knew that, in reality, this was only half a meeting. He had the head of the presidential guard, along with the heads of three other security forces here. But the leaders of the military wing of Hamas were not here, nor of the Gaza police force. If this was a unity government, he had joked with his wife that morning, then he would hate to see a disunity government.

In jail he had planned and strategized for this moment over many years. He had anticipated every Israeli move and prepared a series of possible countermoves. To each of those, he had predicted a range of Israeli reactions, calculating in advance the appropriate Palestinian response to each. If you opened up his head, he thought, you would see a flow chart more complex than the circuit board for the space shuttle.

But he had not factored in sufficiently the durability of Palestinian divisions. He had assumed that by the time serious talks came around there would be a single Palestinian leadership. Indeed, he had taken for granted that his own release would only have come about if the Palestinians had formed a united front. They had cobbled together a coalition, but that was not the same thing.

He had made another error during those long stretches inside Ketziot jail, confined to a cell measuring six feet by four and a half feet for twenty three hours a day. He had always anticipated that the final straight of negotiations would be punctuated by outbreaks of violence on both sides. There would always be hardliners who would move to sabotage progress and atrocity would be their obvious tool. It had happened in every peace process the world over. Al-Shafi knew: he had studied them in footnote detail.

What he had not prepared for was this, attacks which no one claimed and no one could explain. He turned to Faisal Amiry, head of the security operation that was the closest the Palestinians came to an intelligence agency.

‘How is it possible that this attack was staged from Jenin? It’s far, no?’

‘It is far, sir. But if a team were able to get over the wall-’

‘We would know about it. Wouldn’t we?’

‘There may be others who knew.’ It was Toubi, a veteran of the old PLO struggles going back decades. He hated Hamas with a passion.

‘The trouble is, it doesn’t seem like them,’ Amiry replied. ‘It’s not their style. A raid, in then out.’

‘With no martyrs,’ said Toubi. ‘I agree it’s strange. If they wanted to blow up the talks they’d have blown up themselves. On a bus. In the centre of Jerusalem.’

‘Rogue elements?’ asked al-Shafi.

‘That would be something, wouldn’t it, if our friends in Hamas were losing their legendary discipline?’ It was Toubi, with too much of a smile on his face for Khalil’s taste.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Amiry. ‘So far they have stayed remarkably united. The political bureau in Damascus has decided that these talks should work. That we should get an agreement, then call the Israelis’ bluff and demand they honour it. That’s the strategic decision they’ve taken.’

‘And without Damascus, there’s nothing any of the rogue elements can do?’

‘Correct, Mr al-Shafi. They just don’t have the equipment, the training, the money. Nothing.’

‘Jihad?’

‘We wondered about Islamic Jihad. But we have a very good source inside there. He says they are as surprised by this as we are.’

‘What about the target?’

‘That is the strangest thing of all. If you were aiming for loss of life, you’d have turned right out of the kibbutz fields, aiming for the residential buildings. But they were at the museum. Where they only took one life.’

Toubi was nodding. ‘Or not gone there at all. Once they got over the wall, they could have struck Magen Shaul. Why hike all the way to Bet Alpha?’

‘I know why.’ It was al-Shafi, who had got out from behind his desk and was now attending to a chessboard he kept in the corner of his office. A leftover from prison, the chess. He would play entire games in his head, taking both sides, sometimes lasting days. During the spells of solitary confinement, it kept him sane. Now he always had a game on the go.

‘Bet Alpha is the site of an ancient synagogue. Fifteen hundred years old. The Zionists love it because it “proves” they’ve been here as long as we have. If it’s gone, that’s one bit less proof.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘Why not? What else do you think the Jerusalem team at Government House is talking about all day?’ He had still not looked up, his eyes remaining fixed on the white bishop he held between his fingers, hovering over the black rook. ‘It’s all about this.’ He captured the castle, replaced it with his bishop and moved back to his desk.

‘I don’t follow.’

‘It’s all about the past . All about who was here first, who has the prior claim. Do you know what drove the Israelis completely apeshit during Camp David in 2000?’

Toubi shifted in his seat. He resented being lectured to by this younger man.

‘Of all the things, there was one statement by President Arafat that drove the Israelis insane. He denied that there had ever been a temple for the Jews in Jerusalem. “How can this be the Temple Mount?” he said. “Why do you call it the Temple Mount? There was no Temple here. It was in Nablus!”’