Paranoia in Palestine

We don’t live in a place where the government of a neighboring country can arbitrarily decide to take our property. But the West Bank isn’t America and the Palestinians haven’t had any rights for decades.

Lemon Tree chronicles the story of Salma Zidane (Hiam Abbass), a Palestinian woman who lives on the “green line” border with Israel. She has been tending her family’s lemon grove since she was a child. That is, until the day that the Israeli defense minister moves into the house across the border.

His security forces decide that the grove is a threat to national security and inform Zidane that her lemon grove will be uprooted. Seeing the potential for terrorists everywhere, he is convinced that armed men will infiltrate the grove and attack him and his wife. Zidane hires a Palestinian lawyer to fight the Israeli Army, but real assistance comes in the form of an unspoken bond with the minister’s wife.

Based on a true story, this film demonstrates an amazing amount of realism in a time when film is becoming less and less realistic every day. Eran Riklis (The Syrian Bride, Cup Final) is a genius at making films that capture the most personal aspects of Middle Eastern conflict.

In The Syrian Bride (which Hiam Abbass also stars in), a woman from the Golan Heights becomes trapped in the narrow strip of Israeli territory that separates Golan Heights from Syria after the Isreali government changes the immigration rules without telling anyone. Lemon Tree is a similar look at a woman trapped between two unrelenting forces with no way out for herself or her people.

While it is certainly implausible that the defense minister would move into a home so close to the border, especially if the neighboring lands posed a threat, that is not the point of the story. It’s about what happens when you assume that everyone is a terrorist or that everything is motivated by terrorist ideals. Like the film Babel, no one is in this for terrorist reasons except the government, which is certain that this is the only motive for action against it.

In the case of Babel, an American woman is shot by accident as a result of a sibling rivalry. In Lemon Tree, we see a Palestinian woman fighting for the right to continue her life as she always has. Underlying all this is the fact that a permanent wall is being constructed along the green line that will forever separate Israel from its neighbors. The film is centered on finding a peaceful solution to the larger wall issue while focusing on a single event. Thus a perfect allegory is born.

In an age when over-the-top action and stupid humor reign supreme in Hollywood, it is marvelous to see a film that attempts to not only see the bigger picture in a single moment, but does it with elegance and emotional subtlety.