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

by Sandy Tolan

Two months after Camp David, at eight o'clock on the morning of September 28, 2000, Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon arrived in the Old City at the most contested religious site in Jerusalem. It was known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif. Control of the site was a crucial element in the failure of the Camp David summit two months earlier. Sharon, disgraced in the wake of the 1982 massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon, had returned from his journey in the Israeli political wilderness. He served as minister of infrastructure in the Netanyahu government, a position he used to help expand the settlements in the West Bank. Now, as the top opposition leader in the Israeli Knesset, Sharon was sending a message about Israeli sovereignty at a place Muslims consider the third most holy in Islam: To them, what the Israelis call the Temple Mount, with its Western (or Wailing) Wall, is the Haram al-Sharif ("Noble Sanctuary"), a large complex of Muslim holy places that include the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Sharon's move was a political challenge to Barak, his Labor Party rival, and Netanyahu, who had pledged to contest the Likud Party leadership.