Dialogue. It’s a good first step to understanding the other side, to finding solutions, to achieving peace.

I realize it will take much more than conversation to solve the unrest in the Middle East. But it can be a starting point. At least that is part of what I got out of the book The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006) by Sandy Tolan.

Violence isn’t the answer.

This book gave me a greater understanding of the Israeli and Arab points-of-view.

It is the story of Dalia and Bashir; who call the same house in Ramla, Israel, home. The latter was born there and spent the early part of his childhood in this house. Then his family was forced out. Dalia’s family emigrated from Bulgaria and were given this house to call their own.

This book is as much about their individual lives, their friendship, and their separate quests for resolution as it is about the strife of the Mideast from World War II until the book was published.

Having real, relatable people be at the center of the book humanized the ordeal, made it more raw and made me care.

The information I have been fed since I was a child is skewed to be pro-Israel and anti-Arab. It was all one-sided; one is all good, one is all bad. This book is part of my quest to better, if not, re-educate myself.

How did anyone think creating a home for one group of persecuted individuals would work when others—the Palestinians—were displaced? Why wouldn’t people fight for their homeland?

This is a must-read for anyone wanting greater understanding to why there is ongoing conflict in the Middle East.