The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (56 page)

The death of thirteen Israeli Arabs is documented in the U.S. State Department's "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" of February 23, 2001. According to one respected Israeli pollster, by 2002,
46
percent of Israelis supported "transfer" (expulsion) of Palestinians from the occupied territories, and 31 percent supported "transfer" of Israeli Arabs. See "Israeli Public Opinion on National Security 2002" by Asher Arian, director of the National Security Policy and Public Opinion Project at Tel Aviv University. Rehavam Zeevi's "transfer" position was widely known. See, for example, "Israel Mints Ultranationalist Hero,"
Christian Science Monitor,
October 10, 2002. The U.S. State Department "Country Report" of February 28, 2005, referred to Israel's investigation and findings into the deaths of the Israeli Arabs: "The Orr Commission of Inquiry (COI) was established to investigate those killings. It recommended a number of measures, including criminal prosecutions. The Cabinet adopted those recommendations in June."

The Israeli anger over the death of the two soldiers in Ramallah, perhaps more than anything, contributed to a shift to the right in Israel after 2000. According to the Mitchell report, "For Israelis, the lynching of two military reservists, First Sgt. Vadim Novesche and First Cpl. Yosef Avrahami, in Ramallah on October 12, reflected a deep-seated Palestinian hatred of Israel and Jews."

The New Year's Day bombing in Netanya was mentioned in a Reuters article of Januaty 2, 2001: "Barak Doubts Clinton Can Forge Mideast Peace Deal." Barak's "deep doubts" comment comes from this article.

Progress in the talks at Taba was considered genuine by analysts on both sides and by independent observers. One European diplomat sought me out in 2001 to underscore this. He cited the findings of Miguel Moratinos, the EU envoy who was a party to the talks at Taba. In February 2002,
Haaretz
published the Moratinos Document, which can be viewed online at
www.arts.mcgill.ca/MEPP/PRRN/papers/moratinos.html
. Seen through Moratinos's eyes, Taba represented substantial movement toward a comprehensive settlement, with progress on Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem, including some religious sites in the Old City and, for the first time, limited Israeli acknowledgment of UN Resolution 194 and the Palestinian right of return, which had now been on the table for more than fifty years. Barak's remark, made to Morris in the
New York Review of Books
article of June 13, 2002, after his defeat to Sharon, is unyielding on right of return, yet the Moratinos Document clearly states that the Israeli delegation at Taba, ostensibly led by Barak, declared otherwise. It is not clear whether this discrepancy says more about the negotiations at Taba, the accuracy of Moratinos's document, or Barak's own personal and political considerations at the time he made the remark.

The assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa is chronicled in Graham Usher's "As the Dominoes Fall" in
Al-Ahram Weekly
of Cairo, August 30, 2001. The assassination of Zeevi is described in wire service accounts, including an AP article, "Israel's Tourism Minister Killed," from October 17, 2001.

Sharon's words are from a speech in Jerusalem recorded by CNN.

Casualties from the suicide bombings are documented at the Jewish Virtual Library (
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/TerrorAttacks.htm
). The Apache helicopter attacks are cited by
Al-Ahram Weekly s
correspondent Khaled Amayreh in an article on December 6. Israel's attack on Arafat's compound and the Israeli cabinet's declaration that Arafat was "irrelevant" come from a December 13 article, "Israel Launches Attacks After Declaring Arafat 'No Longer Relevant,'" israelinsider.com/ channels/security/articles/sec_0158.htm. The shelling of the Voice of Palestine is documented in a CNN online article at archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/ 01/18/mideast.violence.

Arafat's article "The Palestinian Vision of Peace" was published on the op-ed page of the
New York Times
on February 3, 2002. The later attacks on the
muqata,
as Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah was known, as well as the "steadfast resistance" quote, are mentioned in the February 2002 "Chronological Review of Events Relating to the Question of Palestine, Monthly Media Monitoring Review," by UNISPAL, the UN Information System on the Question of Palestine, at domino. un.org/UNISPAL. The image of a tattered flag was captured by photographer George Azar.

The incident at the Arab Care hospital is described in an April 2001 article in the British
Guardian.
The attack on Jenin is chronicled in the "Report of the Secretary General Prepared Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution ES-10/10" and is online at un.org/peace/jenin. The joke comparing Ramallah to Jenin was told to me by the Palestinian folklorist Dr. Sharif Kanaana.

Statistics on house demolitions are at the Web site of the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (
www.icahd.org/eng/faq.asp?menu=9&submenu=l
), which states, "Since 1967, 12,000 houses
[sic]
Palestinian homes have been demolished in the Occupied Territories." This figure includes East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after the 1967 war. See also B'tselem's November 2004 report, "Through No Fault of Their Own: Israel's Punitive House Demolitions in the al-Aqsa Intifada," which found that "on average, 12 innocent people lost their home for every person suspected of participation in attacks against Israelis."

Rosen-Zvi's "refusenik" stance was documented in
Haaretz,
"Reservist Jailed for Refusal to Serve in Territories," on June 15, 2001.

Details
of
the suicide attack on Dalia, Yehezkel, and Raphael's neighborhood of Kiryat Menachem come from interviews with Dalia and Yehezkel, augmented by press accounts, including a November 21, 2001, article in the British
Guardian,
"Jerusalem Suicide Bombing Kills 11." Abu-Hilail's father's comment and the reoccupation of Bethlehem were reported at the CBS News online Web site in a November 22 article, "Israel Retaliates for Bus Bomb." Arafat's "blind terrorism" comment comes from a James Bennet article in the
New York Times
of November 22.

Dalia and Yehezkel recalled the shrine at the bus station and the content of the handmade signs. Additional details come from Yehezkel's article "Religious Responses to Atrocity," in
Tikkun
18, no. 5 (September-October 2003). The stabbing of the Arab resident was reported by Agence France-Presse on November 24 and recalled by Dalia and Yehezkel; they also described the attack on the Palestinian baker.

Yehezkel's decision to address what he called a "global spiritual crisis" led him, more and more, to Hartford, Connecticut, while Dalia stayed in Jerusalem.

Chapter 13

Notes for this chapter are comparatively short, as the chapter is based largely on interviews with Dalia and Bashir and on my own observations as I spent time with them in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Bulgaria.

Additional details of the monastery come from
www.visitbulgaria.net/places/bachk
ovomonastery/index.shtml. The information about Yad Vashem and the Bulgarian bishops can be found at
wwwl.yadvashem.org
.

The story of Bashir's release from Israeli detention in Ramallah comes from an old friend of Bashir's who did not want his name used. Bashir, characteristically, would not elaborate on the story.

The death of Iman al-Hams on October 5, 2004, was widely reported at the time, including in the
Philadelphia Inquirer on
October 6. The "horrific statistics" quote and details come from Gideon Levy's column in
Ha'aretz,
"Killing Children Is No Longer a Big Deal," from October 17, 2004. Lengthy waits at checkpoints are familiar to all travelers to and from the West Bank. The story of the violinist was also widely reported and is mentioned in an AP story from December 29, 2004, "Palestinian Fiddler Gets Earful of Israeli Hospitality," which describes Tayem's trip to an Israeli kibbutz. Tayem was invited by kibbutzniks who, according to a fellow violinist, "wanted to show him that Israel is not just about terror and violence, that you can also find warmth and good people."

The description of Dalia's trip to Ramallah comes from my own notebooks. I was driving the rental car and waved my blue American passport. For some reason, the Israeli soldiers did not ask for Dalia's identification, which likely would have aborted our journey; we headed north, amazed, with the wall to our left. The "duty-free" is a wry slogan of Palestinians, including Nidal.

Description of the "security fence" (which is partly a twenty-five-foot-high wall) and its construction comes from the Israeli government Web site,
www.securityfence.mod.gov.il/Pages/ENG/execution.htm
. The "sole purpose" quote comes from a.mod.gov.il/Pages/ENG/execution.htm. The "sole purpose" quote comes from a statement by Israel on July 23, 2001. Palestinian objections to the barrier, including the Palestinian Authority's characterization of it as an "apartheid wall," are documented at
www.mofa.gov.ps/positions/2004/19_l_04.asp
. See also the Reuters article of July 10, 2004, which details Palestinian objections to the barrier's route and describes the ruling by the International Court of Justice. White House spokesman Scott McClel-lan's "political issue" quote is from that article; John Kerry's "legitimate act" and "not a matter" quotes come from his presidential campaign and can be found at
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/kerryisrael.html
.

In the encounter between Dalia and Bashir, they spoke a few words to each other in English, but most of it was translated by Nidal, who wrote furiously so as to capture every phrase and faithfully repeat Dalia's words to Bashir and vice versa.

Chapter 14

I learned of the death of the lemon tree on my first trip to Open House in the early part of 1998, when I was working on my radio documentary for the NPR program
Fresh Air.
I remember looking down at one of the hard-shelled lemons and wondering if I should take it for a souvenir while I worked on my story. But I left it on the ground.

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Sandy Tolan is the author of
Me & Hank: A Boy and His Hero, Twenty-five Years Later.
He has written for the
New York Times Magazine
and for more than forty other magazines and newspapers. As co-founder of Homelands Productions, Tolan has produced dozens of radio documentaries for NPR and PRI. He has reported from more than twenty-five countries, especially in the Middle East and Latin America, and his work has won numerous honors. He has served as an oral history consulant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was a 1993 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and an I. F. Stone Fellow at the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where he directs the school's Project on International Reporting.

For more information on Open House—the kindergarten for the Arab children of Ramla, the center for Arab-Jewish encounter, and the place where Dalia and Bashir once lived—visit
www.friendsofopenhouse.org
.

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

The text of this book is set in Adobe Garamond. It is one of several versions of Garamond, based on the designs of Claude Garamond. It is thought that Garamond based his font on Bembo, cut in 1495 by Francesco Griffo in collaboration with the Italian printer Aldus Manutius. Garamond types were first used in books printed in Paris around 1532. Many of the present-day versions of this type are based on the Typi Academiae of Jean Jannon, cut in Sedan in 1615.

Claude Garamond was born in Paris in 1480. He learned how to cut type from his father and by the age of fifteen he was able to fashion steel punches the size of a pica with great precision. At the age of sixty he was commissioned by King Francis I to design a Greek alphabet; for this he was given the title of royal type founder. He died in 1561.