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

The narrative goes back to 1936, when Ahmad Khairi, using white Jerusalem stone, built his family’s home on the eastern edge of al-Ramla, an Arab town with 11,000 people on the coastal plain that runs between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean Sea. Arab farmers at the time produced barley, wheat, tomatoes, melons, and other crops. The Khairis grew oranges, olives, and almonds in a communal land holding called a waqf. The Khairis traced their ancestry back to the 16th-century religious scholar Khair al-Din al-Ramlawi, a judge from Morocco who worked for the Ottoman Empire.

In 1936, Palestine was under the control of the British, who had taken over after the Ottoman Empire’s collapse following World War I. The Khairis had their own family compound, and women in the family stayed mostly in the compound and sent servants to do the shopping. On Tuesdays, the family took over the town cinema to watch movies. Seven years earlier, Ahmad had married a woman named Zakia from the Riad family of al-Ramla—a rare marriage outside of the clan. Ahmed’s uncle, Sheikh Mustafa Khairi, had raised Ahmed after the death of his parents. Mustafa had since become the mayor of the town and was popular with the townspeople as well as the British overseers. However, when Britain took control of Palestine in 1917, it also passed the Balfour Declaration, in which it promised to create a “national homeland for the Jewish people” in Palestine (9). This issue drove the Arabs and the British apart.

As Ahmad built his house, he conferred with Mustafa about building the home with Ahmad’s share of the waqf and the income from Ahmad’s furniture workshop. Zakia, age 26, was pregnant with her fourth baby. Ahmad worked to build his house with a British builder named Benson Solli, who was also a Jew. The Arab and Jewish townsfolk existed in separate worlds, but they did interact. For example, Jews from the local kibbutzim came to the town’s market, and Arabic-speaking Jews bought cement at the factory nearby. Ahmad and Zakia’s daughters studied in Jerusalem with Jewish girls. One of the daughters recalled: “They all spoke Arabic and were Palestinian like us” (10).

Ahmad constructed his quarters with a modern stove even though Zakia could send her bread to a communal oven that had been constructed in 715 CE by Caliph Suleiman Ibn Abdel-Malek. Abdel-Malek made al-Ramla, the capital of Palestine, more important at the time than Jerusalem. It was the site of the famous White Mosque and a 6-mile aqueduct as well as an important trade stopover between Cairo and Damascus. It was later conquered by Crusaders, freed by Saladin, and conquered by the Ottomans. In the 1930s, it was the site of a British military garrison staffed by a colonial officer and troops.

After Hitler gained power in Germany in 1933, Jews fleeing persecution and encouraged by Zionist dreams increasingly settled in Palestine—between 1922 and 1936, the Jewish population in Palestine increased fourfold, and the British struggled to control the flow. Arabs had sold land to Jews from Europe for decades, but this practice was declared treasonous by the mid-1930s as nationalism rose among the Arabs. Meanwhile, Ahmad planted his garden, choosing a spot for a lemon tree that would take seven years to sprout. In late 1936, the house was finished, and the family, with its three little girls, celebrated.

The fall prior, the Great Arab Rebellion had broken out as many Palestinian Arabs believed that the British favored the Jewish settlers. The Balfour Declaration had helped give rise to a Jewish trade union, university, militia (the Haganah), and bank, and the Arabs feared it would give rise to a Jewish state. In the fall of 1935, the British discovered Zionists were smuggling arms but did not prosecute the perpetrators, prompting a Palestinian man named Sheikh Izzadin al-Qassam to gather a small band of fighters. In that same year, the British shot al-Qassam dead, making him a martyr. The rebellion proper broke out when Arab robbers in northern Palestine killed two Jews; retaliation by Jews followed, as did further violence on both sides. The British imposed a state of emergency, and the Arab leadership formed the Arab High Committee, led by the mufti (an Islamic jurist) of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who turned against the British. The Arab High Committee declared an end to Jewish immigration and to land sales to Jews. Arab fighters, or fedayeen, carried out sabotage against British and Jewish targets. In retaliation, the British destroyed the houses of people who were suspected of being rebels.

During the summer of 1936, the Khairi clan and Arabs from across Palestine celebrated the feast of Nabi Saleh, an early prophet who predicted the coming of Mohammed. Rebels attacked workers toiling on water projects and British troops on patrol. The fighters moved at night and were sheltered in houses during the day, including, perhaps, the Khairis’ house.

Meanwhile, the Khairis tried to live their lives. A daughter, Khanom, was born to them, though they had wanted a son. Zakia, who always wore a dress, sometimes went to the market with her daughters, who saw all the produce and wares there. They saw that each villager’s dress told a story; in al-Ramla, where oranges were grown, bodices were embroidered with orange branches. Ahmad worked in his furniture workshop. Vision problems made it hard for him to attend university, so he trained as a tradesman. His business, along with money from the Khairi land, funded a comfortable existence.

By the end of 1936, a temporary peace settled on Palestine as the British investigated the uprising. Lord Peel, formerly an administrator of India, produced a report in 1937 that recommended Palestine be divided into two states. This involved the transfer of over 200,000 Palestinians and about 1,200 Jews. The Zionist leaders such as David Ben-Gurion accepted this plan, believing it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for a Jewish state, but other Zionists, such as Albert Einstein, believed that Jews and Arabs could cooperate and that the population transfer would only create problems. In 1937, the Arab Rebellion again erupted as Arabs shot a British commissioner and the British cracked down on Palestinians in response. Ahmad’s uncle, Sheikh Mustafa, who had formerly commanded great respect, was thought to oppose Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the leader of the Arab High Committee. He opposed the fedayeen’s imposition of taxes on the locals to fund the rebellion, and he fled to Damascus, fearing for his safety (only to return within a month).

By May 1939, the Arab rebels thought that they had won a political victory, as the British government produced its White Paper, which agreed to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe and called for a single state. The paper, a major reversal from the Peel Commission, met with Jewish resistance. Soon, Jewish forces were attacking the British, while the situation of Jews in Europe became increasingly precarious. By 1940, the British had quelled the Arab resistance by jailing and killing thousands of people. As Nazi victories in Africa mounted and Jews were slaughtered in Poland and Germany, Jews feared that Rommel would march to Tel Aviv. However, Palestine was largely quiet during the war. Nevertheless, the British feared that Hajj Amin al-Husseini, now making alliances with the Nazis in Berlin, was readying for a postwar uprising. The British also worried about a Jewish paramilitary group called the Stern group. For the most part, however, Jews and Arabs alike simply worried about how to get through rationing. Meanwhile, Mayor Khairi again ruled in al-Ramla, and Ahmad prepared for the birth of his seventh child and first boy, whom he and his wife called Bashir.