Lemon Tree, The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict From Another Point of View

Lemon Tree,  The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict From Another Point of View

The 2008 Israeli drama film, Lemon Tree, explains the Israel-Palestinian conflict in a simple, but powerful manner. The simplicity by which director, Eran Riklis, used to create this film was purely genius to illustrate his audience of the ongoing conflict in Palestine. The plot of the film is that the Israeli Defense Minister moves into a new house right at the border between Israel and the west bank. Their neighbor is a simple Palestinian woman named Salma Zidane that owns a lemon grove. The Israeli secret service views Salma´s grove as a potential threat to the Defense Minister and his wife, so they obtained a court order demanding the uprooting of her lemon trees. Salma decided to take her case to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court´s decision is not to uproot the trees, but instead cut them down to a few centimeters each. During the film Salma and the Defense Minister’s wife, Mira Navon, develop a bond that was rarely seen between and Israeli woman and a Palestinian woman. A long the film there are certain settle moments between Salma and Mira that seem very simple, but are really very powerful. These moments where there is only silence and staring show how two completely deferent woman that should hate each other start developing mutual respect for one another. This is very rare because the Palestinians and Israelis have felt nothing but hate towards one another, so it’s not usual to see how these two women develop a bond that has never been shared between these two cultures. In conclusion, the subtlety by which this drama film shows the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict is just brilliant. When it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict this movie gives its audience and experience that has not been achieved by other films because of its unique approach to the ongoing issue. 

Work Cited

Unknown, . Lemon Tree. N.d. Photograph. n.p. Web. 9 Mar 2014. <http://www.impawards.com/2009/posters/lemon_tree_ver3_xlg.jpg>.