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

The land that now comprises Israel and Palestine has changed hands many times in history, and both Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs claim longstanding ties to the region. Jewish claims to the territory ultimately stem from the immigration of the biblical Abraham’s descendants to the region in the second millennium BCE and to the kingdom they would ultimately establish there, while Palestinian claims trace their lineage to the peoples living in the region at the time (Gelvin, James L. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History. 4th ed., Cambridge University Press, 2021). However, the more proximate source of the conflict comes from 19th-century history. At the time, the area was under Ottoman control but inhabited largely by Palestinian Arabs (predominantly Muslim but with a sizeable Christian minority); as in other regions of the Ottoman Empire, there were also communities of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, many of whom spoke Arabic and whose culture overlapped significantly with that of their Arab neighbors.

Though similarly assimilated to the surrounding society, the Jewish diaspora community in Europe faced considerably more antisemitism than was generally present in the Middle East. Pogroms in Russia and the Dreyfus affair in France were particularly galvanizing events in Ashkenazi history. Coupled with the rise of European nationalism—broadly speaking, the belief that ethnic groups should have their own nation-states—this led to the emergence of Zionism, or commitment to the creation of a Jewish state in the traditional Jewish homeland of Palestine. By the time Theodor Herzl, referenced in The Lemon Tree as a founding figure of the philosophy, chaired the First Zionist Congress in 1897, many European Jews had already begun immigrating to Palestine, settling on territory purchased from wealthy Arab landowners.

Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Britain took control of Palestine. Britain, which had its own imperial and strategic interests in the region, made conflicting promises to Zionist and Arab leaders about what was now a British “mandate”—i.e., a territory under the theoretically benevolent protection of an imperial power until it was judged ready to govern itself. The most significant of these promises was likely the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which Britain pledged support for the establishment of a Jewish nation in Palestine. The declaration contributed to an upswelling of Palestinian nationalism, and Britain spent much of the interwar era trying to quell frustration on both sides without sacrificing its power. The rise of fascism in Europe complicated this task, as it led to a new influx of Jewish immigrants fleeing Hitler’s antisemitic policies.

The Lemon Tree picks up at roughly this point in history—the run-up to World War II and the final years of British Palestine. However, the events of the late 19th and early 20th centuries provide important context both for the partitioning of the area and for all the debates and conflicts that follow. Bashir, for example, insists on 1917 as the cut-off point for determining which Jewish Israelis should be allowed to remain in the region—an indication of how deep a betrayal many Palestinian Arabs considered (and consider) the Balfour Declaration.