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

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain references to antisemitism (including the Holocaust), terrorist violence, ethnic cleansing, and military occupation.

In July 1967, Bashir Khairi, a young Arab man, is in the bathroom of the West Jerusalem bus station in Israel. He has prepared for the trip he is taking with his cousins Yasser and Ghiath since he was six—20 years in all. The men are from Ramallah, a Palestinian town 30 minutes to the north, where they are refugees. They took a taxi to East Jerusalem, where there had been fighting only weeks before that led to the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. During the Six Day War, Israelis had taken over the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. After making their way to the bus station, Bashir and his cousins bought tickets to al-Ramla; they now prepare to board.

The action then switches to a woman named Dalia Eshkenazi, who is sitting in her house in Ramla. After days of the air raid sounding, it is finally quiet. Dalia is on a summer break from Tel Aviv University. She felt the stress of the fighting acutely, but she was determined “to never again be led like sheep to the slaughter” as Jews had been during the Holocaust (3).