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poisoned meat in No Man’s Land as part of a joint anti-rabies campaign. The dog problem was particularly bad in Jerusalem’s Abu Tor neighborhood. Abu Tor had been cut in two by the 1948 war. The top of the hillside neighborhood was inside Israel, but most of Abu Tor was part ofJordan. The two countries were separated by a skinny band that cut across a steep hillside of stone homes and small orchards.
    Led by a Scottish major with the UN and with an Israeli paratrooper keeping watch, Rubinger clicked away as Israeli and Jordanian veterinary workers tossed the deadly meat into the fields. Rubinger followed the team along the coils of barbed wire running between the homes and neglected terraced gardens. No Man’s Land seemed deserted, and bitter winter winds swept up the valley. The team walked along Barbed Wire Alley, a rocky path that would one day become Assael Street.
    â€œIt felt like you were going somewhere nobody ever goes,” Rubinger said. “Like virgin territory.”
    While they were throwing out the meat, they heard something moving in the abandoned homes below. They watched warily as a Jordanian soldier came their way. He wore a long wool coat and a scarf that covered all but his eyes and nose. The soldier waved and made his way toward Rubinger and the anti-rabies team. In the chilly afternoon breeze, the Jordanian soldier walked up to a low stone wall in No Man’s Land and handed the Israeli paratrooper a glass of hot tea so he could warm himself up. Rubinger was amazed to see this small act of kindness between two soldiers from enemy nations.
    â€œThat was unique,” he said. “Not just rare. Unique. The border between Israel and Jordan was such that nobody crossed alive.”
    A few months later, Rubinger drove to Qalqilya, a small village up north that was right on the Israel-Jordan border. The dividing line put the village in Jordan and its fields to the west in Israel. That created endless problems. The villagers had a hard time accepting that they lived in one country while their old farmlands were now in another. It was even harder to explain to their sheep, cows and donkeys, which gave little thought about new nations and wondered more about where they were going to get their next meal. It was a problem that dogged UN officials who complained that the borders made no sense.
    â€œHad the line been drawn to respect village boundaries, little trouble would have resulted,” said E. H. Hutchison, a commander in the US Navy who took over as chairman of the Jordan-Israel MAC in 1953. “The inhabitants of the villages so affected are not prepared to respect the invisible line or political decrees that are supposed to keep them from the lands they and their forbearers have owned and cultivated for hundreds of years.” 15
    That day in 1957, Rubinger had been tipped off that a big international trial was going to be held in Qalqilya. When he arrived, Israeli and Jordanian officers were gathering on the border to decide the fate of a cow.
    â€œThey had a court sitting on the road, in the middle of the road, that had to decide whom the cow belonged to,” said Rubinger, who was so captivated by the unfolding legal battle that he shot three rolls of film.
    The uniformed Jordanian and Israeli officials set up three folding metal tables on the road in No Man’s Land between large metal anti-tank barricades shaped like big toy jacks. The aggrieved Arab farmers, wearing long formless thobes and white flowing kaffiyehs held on the head by a double knot of black cord, met on the road to plead their case. Jordanian and Israeli soldiers milled around as the men argued over whose cows were whose. The cows in question were led before the judges for examination. The court issued its decree. Decades later, Rubinger couldn’t remember just how it played out. And nothing was left in his photo archives to jog his memory.
    Cooling Off in No Man’s Land
    Livestock