The subtitle of “The Lemon Tree” explains the book in a nutshell: “An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East”.  Twenty-two patrons at the Bettendorf Public Library were lucky enough to have two facilitators for a discussion of this book recently: Dr. Art Pitz who’s been to Israel many times and knows both Arabs and Jews and Dr. Lisa Killinger who’s been a practicing Muslim for over 30 years.  Just as with the subtitle of the book on Black Hawk which was reviewed recently on this blog, the word “heart” has more than one meaning.  It could be geographical location.  It could also be a symbol of love or compassion.  Tolan framed this history of the mideast conflict with the story of two people who lived in the same house in Palestine/Israel at different periods.  They met for the first time after a generation had passed and they became friends.  Because of that human aspect, this history is much more readable.  Though battles, wars, and massacres are discussed as in most straight histories, they are not the primary concerns of this book.  More than anything else I’ve read, it has helped me to understand why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has remained unresolved.