Helen Schary Motro * - Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 03 August 2006
Jerusalem - A new sad threshold was crossed this hot July in the Holy Land. But at the 2006 Jerusalem Film Festival this month it was another story. Inside the cool theatre, sinking into upholstered seats, listening to welcoming speeches, and mingling with the festive appreciative audience, one could forget for a moment, and believe that the scenes filmed with such passion and hope would force their way from celluloid to reality.
And yet, the Festival mirrored local reality. Although it showed international films on general themes, "The Issue" at the core of every cultural exploration in this area loomed large -- the one gnawing at the innards, barking at the gates, the issue that no matter what is happening refuses to go away: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Two films in particular had for a central theme that progress is to be achieved not through silence but through cross-national talk, not through muscles but through attitude.
The Israeli premiere of Encounter Point was ironically screened the very day that outside, the violence between Israel and Hezbollah erupted. Director Ronit Avni followed several remarkable Palestinian and Israeli individuals in their inner journeys from anger and hatred to the realization expressed by Ali Abu Awaad, who lost a brother at the hands of the Israelis: "I don`t have to love Israelis in order to make peace with them." A young man in the prime of life, Ali doggedly makes his way through Palestinian cities trying to convince anybody who will listen that the way to reach agreement is by talking.
Similarly, Robi Damelin, whose Israeli soldier son was killed by a Palestinian sniper during the second intifada, has become a tireless ambassador for co-coexistence. Like Awaad does with his people, Damelin talks to hardliners among Israelis, concluding she finds it easier to speak to Palestinians than to settlers. Despite the difference of age, Awaad and Damelin, both smokers, become comrades in the effort. When the tongue-in-cheek suggestion is made in the film that the way to achieve peace in the space of one day is to require every Israeli who wants to smoke to cross the border and vice versa, Damelin and Awaad sitting side by side in the audience both burst out in knowing laughter.
The film juxtaposes two bereaved families: of Bat Chen Shahak killed in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv and of Christine Sadeh of Bethlehem killed by Israeli soldiers when the car in which she was riding matched the description for a vehicle transporting a wanted terrorist. The fathers Shahak and Sadeh sit hunched over and united in their grief and their determination to overcome its causes. Says Shahak: "If we who lost what is dearest to us can talk, then surely all the rest of the people can do it."
The observant Jewish man Shlomo makes an inner journey through the course of the film. He chooses to leave living in the West Bank settlement where he grew up and re-locate within Israel`s pre-1967 borders. Similarly, Shlomo meets face to face with Palestinians and leaves his office job to become leader of an interfaith dialogue group. Still, to the film`s credit, it portrays the grey areas that lodge within peoples` souls. For example, Shlomo expresses doubts about the best way to achieve justice while not sacrificing Israeli security. "The Right and Left have it easy. They can put their belief on a sticker. But if you are like me it takes a full page. Who will read it?" he asks wistfully.
The overflowing enthusiastic audience gave the film a standing ovation, participating in a question/answer session conducted in Hebrew, English and Arabic. One Israeli man angrily implied the film was slated against Israel, while a Palestinian woman vehemently expressed the opposite. Director Avni relished the disagreement: "That`s proof that we have succeeded."
The premiere showing of Lilly Rivlin`s Can You Hear Me? Israeli and Palestinian Women Fight for Peace was delayed for over half an hour. There were simply too many in the huge crowd milling outside the theatre who were busy reuniting with old acquaintances from the peace movement. Rivlin is a veteran of that movement, and many from the audience included her long-time supporters and co-activists, among them seminal Israeli feminists such as Alice Shalvi, founder of the Israel Women`s Network.
From Israeli Women in Black who have been holding weekly demonstrations against the occupation for 30 years to Machsom Watch whose Israeli women volunteers help monitor the Israeli checkpoints, the documentary interviewed women who have consistently stood up for their conscience through the ups and downs of the peace movement. A young Israeli mother from Machsom Watch who intervenes on behalf of Palestinians recounts that she is doing it for herself and her children, when they ask her in the future: "What did you do to help?"
The film succeeds in giving a short general introduction to the conflict, especially valuable for non-Middle East audiences. When the going gets rough, it argues, men tend to turn away from each other and turn to violence. Women, on the other hand, understand that it is precisely when tension is highest that talking must not cease. Thus, Israeli diplomat Collette Avital is shown in dialogue with Palestinian counterpart Lilly Habash. Palestinian Nadwa Sarandah, whose sister was shot in Jerusalem during the intifada, has been calling for peace on world tours together with Israeli Robi Damelin. How have things changed since the death of her son, Damelin is asked. "I have been working for peace all my life. After my son`s death, people started to take my seriously."
The most powerful portrait is that of Leah Shakdiel, an observant Jew whose life has been a commitment to the movement for justice and co-existence. Growing up in a Jerusalem house that belonged to Arabs before the Israeli War of Independence, Shakdiel moves to a small town in the Israeli Negev where she and her husband actively and passionately pursue the peace movement, including working for disadvantaged groups like Israeli Bedouins. Shakdiel speaks with a passion resonant with idealism, emerging as a rounded human being. Driving over what Shakdiel calls an "apartheid road" -- one open only to Israeli drivers -- to visit a daughter who has chosen to live in an Israeli settlement on the West Bank, Shakdiel is appalled to see the enormity of the separation wall under construction. With her daughter turning to the political right, Shakdiel ! sadly confesses her feeling that she has failed as a mother.
Can You Hear Me? avoids unrealistic platitudes. When Shakdiel goes to visit the home of Palestinian Maha Abu Dayyeh-Shamas, with whom she has had contacts at peace initiatives, the meeting takes an unexpected sour turn. Feeling that her efforts and commitment to the cause are negated and dismissed, Shakdiel weeps in frustration. What begins cordially descends into a bitter verbal bout and ends in enmity. Sometimes hearing one another is not enough to bridge the gaps.
Movies can be escapism, entertainment and art. In this region, cinema is also a tool to express, and perhaps to help solve, the existential Middle Eastern question.
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* Helen Schary Motro, who teaches at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law, is author of Maneuvering between the Headlines: An American Lives through the Intifada. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews)
