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

The chapter opens with Bashir’s family taking him to a mosque in Hebron for a baby-naming ceremony in late February 1942 when he was 10 days old. He was much doted on by his family. During World War II, the Palestinian economy boomed, as it was a staging area for the fighting in North Africa. After the war, the status of Jewish refugees became pressing, as the Mossad (which later became the Israeli spy agency) began to smuggle such refugees into Palestine; the British, abiding by the White Paper, tried to keep them in Cyprus. Jews in Palestine—working with the Haganah and the extremist militias, the Irgun and the Stern group—wanted the British out of Palestine. The Irgun exploded a bomb in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where the British intelligence agency was headquartered, killing 80 people. Solia’s cousin, Yitzhak Yitzhaki, arrived in Jerusalem in 1945 and soon joined the Haganah. To determine what to do with Palestine, the British turned the affair over to a UN fact-finding mission.

Arabs in Palestine were nervous about the outcome of the UN mission. The leader of the Arab Rebellion, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the ex-mufti of Jerusalem, lived in exile, and rival groups developed in his absence. Arab governments professed their support of a single independent state, as the ex-mufti did, but some had their own goals. King Abdullah of Transjordan met in secret with Zionist leaders and planned to divide Palestine with them. Abdullah made claims on the West Bank of the Jordan River: “This gap between public pan-Arab unity and the hidden interests of individual leaders would prove significant in the months and years to come” (49).

In November 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to create two states in Palestine—one for Arabs and one for Jews. The British would leave on May 15, 1948. The Khairis were “in shock,” as al-Ramla, their town, would be only kilometers away from the Jewish state. Many Arabs would be in the Jewish state, where they would be a 45% minority. The Palestinian leadership vowed to oppose the deal, and while many Jews celebrated this decision, Jewish leaders such as David Ben-Gurion worried about the large Arab population in the Jewish state.

Yitzhaki immediately received word that he should go up to Mt. Scopus to defend Jerusalem from potential Arab attacks. On the bus en route, there was an explosion that caused him to dive onto the floor, where he met his future wife, Varda Carmon.

Meanwhile, Arab states and the ex-mufti were making plans to attack Jewish sites. Zionist forces, filled with Holocaust survivors who were “highly motivated to defend their homeland” also readied themselves for battle (51). Ben-Gurion said, “The boundaries of the state will not be determined by a UN resolution, but by the force of arms” (51). In early 1948, bombs planted by both Jewish and Arab forces caused deadly explosions in Jerusalem, and Arab forces blocked two key points between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean—the mountain pass at Bab al-Wad and al-Ramla, which was on the Jaffa-Jerusalem road.

The Khairis became increasingly worried when the house of the ex-mufti’s commander, which was just outside al-Ramla, was destroyed and when the nephew of the ex-mufti died in battle. Yitzhaki had his own worries. He took a 24-hour leave from Mt. Scopus, and his girlfriend, Varda, got him another day off. The caravan he was supposed to be on was attacked, and everyone on it was killed. Thinking he was on the bus, his family in Bulgaria mourned him.

In al-Ramla, Bedouins fighting for King Abdullah began to arrive. Barefoot and without sufficient weapons, they seemed ill-equipped to defend the town. Refugees from Jaffa and a village named Na’ani began to arrive in town, having been warned by a neighboring Jew that the Jewish forces were on the way to kill the Arabs.

On May 14, Ben-Gurion announced Israel’s independence. The next day, as he broadcast the news to the US, Egypt was bombing Tel Aviv. Egyptian forces attacked Israeli forces in the Negev, Syrians and Iraqis entered from the east, and King Abdullah’s forces marched across the Jordan River in the hope of claiming the West Bank. Al-Ramla descended into hand-to-hand combat between Jewish and Arab forces, and the local Arab residents asked King Abdullah and the head of his Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb, for help. Abdullah instead sent Glubb to Jerusalem. In his secret dealings with the Jewish leadership, Abdullah had planned to claim the West Bank and al-Ramla, but the entry of his forces was a declaration of war against Israel. Meanwhile, both Jewish and Arab civilians were being attacked, and Irgun forces attacked al-Ramla. Ahmad moved his family to Ramallah, thinking the move was only temporary.

A UN negotiator, Count Folke Bernadotte, arrived in Transjordan to arrange a truce, and both the Arab and Israeli forces tried to gain as much territory as possible before the truce was declared. The UN declared a truce and arms embargo on June 11, but Israel managed to break the embargo with a shipment from Czechoslovakia, meaning the Arab forces would be at a disadvantage if hostilities resumed. King Abdullah, content with having grabbed most of the West Bank, pressured the UN for an armistice, and the UN negotiator agreed, setting the border between Israel and Transjordan. This meant that al-Ramla would be part of Transjordan. Israel, though reeling from a brush with civil war when the Haganah blew up an Irgun ship (part of the government’s efforts to consolidate defense under the Israeli Defense Forces, the successor of the Haganah), refused to agree to this plan. The gambit to shore up the IDF had worked, leaving Israel in a stronger position than it had been before the truce. Many members of the Arab League still pushed for a single Arab-majority state, and King Abdullah was forced to join them.

On July 11, Lieutenant Israel Gefen, part of Commando Battalion Eighty-Nine of the IDF, along with his commander, Lieutenant Colonel Moshe Dayan, were part of Operation Dani to secure the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Their tanks rolled into the town of Lydda near al-Ramla and mowed down everything and everyone in their path. In al-Ramla, Sheikh Mustafa urged his people to stay in the town. However, the reinforcements they had requested from the Arab Legion never came, and the Bedouins slipped out of town. The Khairis holed up in their compound. On July 11, Mustafa ordered his son to bring a white flag to the Israeli forces, signifying their defeat. The Israeli security chief who arrived in al-Ramla had orders from Ben-Gurion to evacuate everyone from the town, no matter their age. Some members of Israeli leadership believed that these evacuations would prevent the retaking of the town and create a burden for King Abdullah, although the Israeli minister of minority affairs considered the expulsion of the Palestinian Arab population of conquered territories a disgrace.

Firdaws Taji, a second cousin of the Khairis, and other relatives were loaded onto buses and then ordered to march through the heat to the town of Salbit. From there, they were taken to Ramallah. They had left all their belongings in al-Ramla and were “determined to return home” (69).