The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

The experiences of Dalia’s and Bashir’s families have been similar at points in the past. Dalia’s family, who were Jews from Bulgaria, survived the Holocaust, and her father, a Zionist, always felt drawn to Palestine. After the Holocaust, they moved to Israel, ending the centuries of Jews in exile without a homeland. Bashir’s family is uprooted from their house in al-Ramla, in what was old Palestine, and they then enter an extended period of exile in the West Bank and Gaza. Bashir is himself exiled from the West Bank to Lebanon and later Tunis, even though he constantly dreams of returning home to Ramla.

The Jews and Palestinians, then, have both been people in exile. They have the experience of being adrift and also being subjected to persecution. In Europe, Dalia’s family did not know whether they would be sent to concentration camps, and Bashir is subjected to imprisonment at many times. Different entities intervene at times to help them. During World War II-era Bulgaria, the Orthodox bishops intervened to save Bulgarian Jews from deportation to concentration camps, and Dalia and other Israelis work to create interfaith relationships and dialogue with the Arabs and others in their country.

Bashir’s undying hope for return to his family’s home in Ramla is similar to Dalia’s father’s belief in Zionism—a movement that developed in the late 1800s with the goal of the Jewish return to their ancestral homeland.