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

by Sandy Tolan

"Hatikva," for sixty years the anthem of the Zionists

Moshe had never heard of the town. But why not? he thought. Let us try this place called Ramla.

abaya

King Abdullah

"According to the Red Cross representative who had been in Tel Aviv," declared a confidential U.S. State Department air gram, "the Jews on capturing [al-Ramla] forced all the Arab inhabitants to evacuate the town, except Christian Arabs, whom they permitted to remain. This information was partially confirmed in a recent report from a Controlled American Source."

Soldiers from Moshe Dayan's Commando Battalion Eighty-nine, having little to patrol, had been among those looting.

"Battalion 89's outrageous behavior peaked when they threatened our inspector with a bullet unless he left the area while they were collecting their loot. . . ." In the late summer

A few Israelis raised their voices in alarm. "We still do not properly appreciate what kind of enemy we are now nurturing outside the borders of our state," the agriculture minister, Aharon Cizling, warned in a cabinet meeting.

"Our enemies, the Arab states, are a mere nothing compared with those hundreds of thousands of Arabs [that is, Palestinian refugees] who will be moved by hatred and hopelessness and infinite hostility to wage war on us, regardless of any agreement that might be reached. . . ."

(After the war, the "Trans" was dropped and Abdullah's kingdom was known simply as Jordan.)

"A Jewish State called Israel exists in Palestine,"

Count Folke Bernadotte was killed in the Katamon quarter of Jerusalem.

the extremist Jewish militia group the Stern Gang claimed responsibility,

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's prime minister, detained two hundred members of the Stern Gang, including one of its leaders, future prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, and ordered the other extremist Jewish militia, Irgun, led by another future premier, Menachem Begin, to disband and turn over its weapons to the Israeli army.

The Irgun ceased to function as a separate military unit, and Ben-Gurion's fight to consolidate the milit...

B...

began to convert the Irgun into a political party, the Herut, which two decades later would form ...

As the fighting in the desert continued, Count Bernadotte's proposal, like countless other "peace plans" that would follow, dissolved into history.

the establishment of a massive tent camp in Jericho,

Near the end of 1948, Ahmad and Zakia, unable to find decent work and overwhelmed by the misery around them, decided to move the family to Gaza.

would be much warmer on the Mediterranean coast. Ahmad had better job prospects there, and the family had relatives with property who could help them find a modest home to live in rent-free.

In the span of a few months in 1948, two hundred thousand refugees had poured into this narrow band of sand dunes and orange groves along the Mediterranean, more than tripling its population.

The Khairis had come to Gaza in the midst of war and political turmoil.

Egypt, led by King Farouk, was fighting for territory not just with Israel; the king was also worried about his counterpart, Abdullah of Jordan, and his own quest for territory.

Egypt allowed a small Palestinian independence group to establish a government-in-exile in Gaza.

Abdullah's response, in December 1948, was to crown himself "King of United Palestine," which included not all of Palestine, but what he now called the "West Bank" of his kingdom.

The right of return originally advocated by Count Bernadotte was enshrined by the United Nations in December 1948.

UN Resolution 194 declared that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return."

The resolution—known simply as "one-nine-four"—generated tremendous hope for the Khairis and ref...

It was already clear, however, that Israel had no intention of implementing Resolution 194 and that the United Na...

created UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, to generate jobs and housing for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees

Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza. Soon crude cinder-block buildings were rising from the sands of Gaza amid the tents and dug-out latrines. Alongside stood mud-brick houses with roofs made out of reeds, empty asphalt barrels, and milk cartons. The "streets" of the refugee camps—narrow dirt lanes separating long rows of low block housing—took

and for Ahmad's firstborn son, avenging the loss of Palestine became a singular goal, even in play.

By the summer of 1949,

Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq had signed armistice agreements with Israel; the war was officially over.

King Abdullah completed his annexation of the West Bank, infuriating Palestinian nationalists.

In Gaza, the Egyptians responded by repressing all forms of political expression, and Palestinian nationalism was forced underground.

with deep conviction: The Jews expelled us; we have a right to return.

Generally, it can be said that any Arab house that survived the impact of the war . . . now shelters a Jewish family."

al-Awda (Return)

By the mid-1950s, however, the prospect for return suddenly seemed real again. It was personified around a single figure who would fire the Arab imagination.

Gamal Abdel Nasser, the son of a postal worker, who had come to power in Egypt in 1952 after the expulsion of the British and the exile of King Farouk.

Tensions between Egypt and Israel would increase in the coming years, resulting in the Suez conflict, a military victory for Israel that would, ironically, fortify Nasser's position as the undisputed leader of a growing pan-Arab movement.

After nearly nine years in Gaza, Ahmad and Zakia Khairi decided to move the family back to Ramallah.

Father and son emerged from the plane into the cool air of Qalandia, just south of Ramallah, in the West Bank of the Kingdom of Jordan.