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

Bashir was born in 1942 to Ahmad and Zakia when they lived in al-Ramla in Palestine. His family had lived in Palestine for centuries. In 1948, when Israel became a country, his family was uprooted by Palestinian troops and forced to move—first to Ramallah on the West Bank and later for a period of time to Gaza before returning to Ramallah. He always dreamed of returning. After becoming a lawyer in the West Bank, he became radicalized and was accused of having participated in a supermarket explosion in Jerusalem carried out by an extremist Palestinian group. Over the years, he was jailed many times and also exiled for a period of time. He met Dalia when he returned to his family’s old house in 1967. He married his cousin and has two children—a boy named Ahmad after his father (Ahmad winds up going to Harvard) and a girl named Hanine. He remained committed to the idea that Palestinians should be allowed to return to their homes in old Palestine.

Dalia was born to Jewish parents in Bulgaria in 1948. Soon thereafter, her parents left Bulgaria to go to Israel, where they settled in Bashir’s former home in al-Ramla. She grew up there and then attended university, studying English.