Etz Limon (Lemon Tree)

From Israel comes Lemon Tree, a sympathetic look at the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although leaning a bit heavily on allegory and reverting to didactism at times, the director Eran Riklis crafts a simple story of dignity through the identity of the individuals behind the lemon trees and their slow resolution of the conflict.

The story centers around Salma Zidane, a middle-aged Palestinian widow who owns a grove of lemon trees in the West Bank, passed down through her late father. The only human interaction she has is with Abu Hussam, the ancient caretaker of the trees for the past fifty years. Salma's life changes when Defense Minister Israel Navon and his wife Mira moves next door and erects fences, a guard tower, and then insists on chopping down her lemon trees because it's a potential harbor for terrorists and assassins. Salma recruits Ziad Doud, a young lawyer, to fight her case until it reaches the Supreme Court in Jerusalem.

The Defense Minister is callow and hawkish, while his wife is slowly affected as she sees Salma through the windows of her mansion and ten feet high wire fences. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that the lemon trees represent the Palestinian people, corralled and threatened by the Israeli military and establishment. Israel Navon represents Israel now, while his wife is the conscience, or Israel as it should be. Salma embodies the spirit and attitudes of the Palestinian people, and embraces her heritage while being tempted by and ultimately rejecting modernization. Much of the movie focuses on fences, ultimately denouncing the Israeli West Bank barrier as the means of depriving Palestinians of their identity and creating an insurmountable gap between the two cultures. Riklis creates a spare and realistic movie that manages to be touching as well as informative.

Hiam Abbass, with the same quiet strength and passion that she showed in The Visitor, carries the movie convincingly as Salma Zidane. Through her character, we see the life of an Arab woman, and although repressive, the appealing side as well. She is matched by the empathy and genuine kindness of Mira Navon, played by newcomer Rona Lipaz-Michael. The rest of the cast turn in good performances as well, from Ali Suliman as her sweet and boyish lawyer and Doron Tavory as the gruff and cowardly Israel Navon.

I watched this movie with two of my Israeli friends, who confessed to liking it somewhat, but not too much. Many Israelis are realistic, and buoyed by the increasingly liberal media in Israel, recognize the issues and consequences of military actions in the last few years. However, that's all peanuts when considering the primitive issue of survival. Situated in an area where its neighbors would gladly raze it and its inhabitants to the ground, hard decisions must be made, some right and some wrong. As Lemon Tree shows us, conflicts can be resolved peacefully, but there will always be a loser when 3,000 years of history is involved.