THE LEMON TREE by Sandy Tolan

Bantam, £16.99

ON A HOT DAY IN JULY 1967, shortly after the Six-Day War, Bashir Khairi, a young Arab lawyer, and two of his cousins embark upon a pilgrimage to visit their homes in al-Ramla, a town near Tel Aviv. For nearly 20 years, since the l948 War of Independence and the establishment of the State of Israel, they have been refugees in Ramallah, in the Left Bank, forbidden to cross the border into Israel. Now the border has shifted, and they can realise their dream.

At the first house they are met with hostility and threats, the second has become a school, but at the third, Dalia, a student on holiday from the nearby University of Tel Aviv – “One of the most beautiful women I have ever seen” – invites them in graciously, “as if she had been waiting for them all these years”.

Thus begins the friendship between Bashir Khairi, the Arab nationalist activist, and Dalia Eshkenazi, the Zionist student of Bulgarian origin, which endures four decades. It is the foundation on which Sandy Tolan builds his remarkable book – the story of two communities, “two dreams . . . two realities”, going back to the 19th century and the birth of Zionism, through the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate of Palestine after the First World War and the creation of Israel.

Tolan has conducted hundreds of interviews, combed through archives in six languages and as many countries, read all the books and weighed all the arguments. Yet he does not claim complete objectivity, rather his book presents “multiple subjectivities”, often irreconcilable: the birth of Israel in 1948 is perceived by the Israelis as liberation, and by the Arabs as Nakba, the catastrophe. It makes for sad reading – tears come frequently.

Bashir tells Dalia the story of the house. The Khairis were a prominent family in al-Ramla – renamed Ramle after annexation by Israel – an Arab town founded in 715. Bashir’s father Ahmed built the house for his family with the help of a Jewish architect friend in 1936, when the various communities lived in harmony. He planted a lemon tree at the back of the garden, where the children played in its shade and picked the fruit.

Bashir was 6 and Dalia only a year old when the Israeli army expelled the population of al-Ramla and the Khairis took refuge in Ramallah. One day, playing in the sand, Bashir picked up a shiny object that he believed to be a toy. It was a booby-trapped bomb that exploded in his hand. He lost four fingers and the palm of his left hand. From then on, “return” became the goal of his life. “We were taught at school that the cowardly Arabs left their town voluntarily,” Dalia tells him, “though I wondered why anyone would wish to leave such a beautiful house voluntarily.”

The meeting with Bashir transforms Dalia's perception – “I understand your longing for home because of our own experience of exile” – and from then on she works for reconciliation between the two communities. She becomes a peace activist, while Bashir joins the resistance, through years of imprisonment, torture, deportation and exile.

They keep in touch, marry – Dalia a religious scholar and Bashir a cousin – and produce children. Tolan describes how the conflicts brutalise the people, hatred hardens the hearts, the chasm between the two sides widens, eventually the Wall goes up, “a towering curtain of concrete . . . as if in my heart”. For Bashir the solution is a democratic secular Palestine where all communities live in harmony and equality, independent of race, creed and colour, while Dalia believes in two states, separated along the 1967 borders, living in peace and cooperation. “We each need to make sacrifices,” she tells Bashir; “understand the other . . . We could act as mirrors through which our own redemption eventually grows.”

They may disagree “on how to visualise the viability of this land . . . And yet we are so deeply connected . . . If national interest comes before our common humanity, there is no hope for redemption, no hope for healing”.

When Dalia’s parents die and she has moved from al-Ramla, the Lemon Tree House becomes vacant. She and Bashir agree to turn it into a school for Arab children: “I want them to have what I lost,” Bashir says. “Yet I can’t sit on the school board because I’m a Palestinian.” They call it Open House. In l998 the lemon tree dies of old age, but on the request of the children a sapling is planted in its place, symbol of hope for the future.

On leaving Bashir’s house in Ramalla at their last meeting, Dalia murmurs: “My enemy is the only partner I have.” For reconciliation to be realised, they have to forget history, start afresh: “I am part of the problem because I come from Europe,” Dalia says. “I am part of the solution because I love.” In the end only love can redeem.

At a time when peace seems remote and darkness deepens, this lucid, humane, hopeful book shines like a ray of light.

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