The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew and the Heart of the Middle East
Sandy Tolan, 384 pages + loads of extra acknowledgments
This extraordinary story is based on the true lives of a Jewish Israeli woman and a Palestinian man and how their lives come together. Told through their histories, alongside that of the history of Israel and Palestine, Sandy Tolan outdoes himself in the extensive research of this book. The two characters, Dalia and Bashir are dynamic individuals, both striving for a different sort of Israel, but tied together by a lemon tree. The story of The Lemon Tree is the secret to the book.
It was enlightening to learn more about the history of Israel, it really helps to have a working knowledge of the beginnings of the country and the men behind it- it was interesting to learn more about the roles of Ben- Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Lemon Tree focuses on the boarder town of al- Ramla, and the forced removal of Bashir’s family and the Palestinians that lived there. It also tells the story of Dalia, whose parent’s escaped the holocaust in Bulgaria to start afresh in al- Ramla.
When the two finally become friends, she, as Jewish, identifies with Bashir’s expulsion from his homeland. But they disagree on how that should come about.