I saw a powerful, moving, and thought provoking movie last night. Encounter Point (2006) is a documentary, presenting a very personal, thought-provoking, and inspiring perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The film makers spent 16 months following several Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones to the violence.
Among these is Ali Abu Awwad, a Palestinian in his mid thirties who as a teenager was involved in the First Intifada, throwing stones at Israeli forces. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, and released after four as a result of the Oslo agreement. During the Second Intifada he was shot in the leg by an Israeli settler, and while recuperating in a Saudi hospital he received news that his brother had been shot and killed by an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint.
Robi Damelin is an Israeli Jew in her early sixties who came to Israel from her home country of South Africa as a volunteer worker after the 1967 Six Day War. Her son David was a soldier in the Israeli army, working at a checkpoint outside an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, when he was shot and killed by a Palestinian sniper.
All that Robi and Ali would seem to have in common is their bereavement, and in each case one might expect this to radicalize both of them, to inspire them to seek retribution. Instead, both seek to channel their anger and sense of loss into peacemaking by joining the Bereaved Families Forum, a grassroots organization of bereaved Palestinians and Israelis working to promote reconciliation and peace as an alternative to hatred and revenge.
On both sides, members of the Forum confront hostility from their own communities. “We don’t want peace, we must have resistance and war,” an eleven year old Palestinian tells Ali. Israeli Forum members encounter similar skepticism, even hostility, from fellow Israelis. Yet they persevere.
As a geographer, I was struck by the importance of the rigidly enforced spatial separation of Israelis and Palestinians. The apparently simple goal of getting members of the Forum in the same place to talk to one another is frustrated by checkpoints, barriers, and boundaries, movement through them tightly controlled by the Israeli military. Geographic separation means that it very difficult to find common ground, literally or metaphorically. But this isn’t a side-effect of the separation, it is it’s purpose. If people inhabit separate worlds, if they don’t meet one another at a human level, it’s easier to dehumanize them. And dehumanizing enemies, it seems to me, a prerequisite for fighting and killing them. Getting to know your adversary at a human level makes violence more difficult and less likely. As Ali notes, “an Israeli general once said that non-violence is the most dangerous weapon the Palestinians possess, because it undermines all the excuses for the occupation and the legitimacy they claim to have when destroying a house or assassinating someone.”
In the film, Robi says of the views of some militant Israeli settlers, “It’s just like South Africa.” Like Robi, I grew up in apartheid-era South Africa, and she’s right. White domination required that whites didn’t see blacks as fully human. If we did, how could we subject them to the inhumanities of apartheid? If whites and blacks could meet as fellow humans, let alone as friends, how could apartheid endure? The solution was rigid segregation, which ensured that we lived in separate worlds.
At one level I found the film inspiring, The unusual courage and commitment of these brave peacemakers can only be admired. If more people were like them, the world would be a very different place.
But most people aren’t like them, and for that reason the film also left me depressed. The peacemakers face a huge challenge, perhaps an insurmountable one. Revenge is so much simpler than reconciliation; it is much easier to rally people with a call to victory than a call to compromise. As one of the interviewees says, “People on the Left and on the Right see it clearly. They have slogan, which they write on stickers and place on cars. But if, like me, your position is a full page, how can you make it a sticker? Who will read it?”
I can help reflecting on the fact that these lessons apply not only to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or to the struggle against apartheid, but to all violent conflicts, not least the current conflict(s) in Iraq. Each side dehumanizes and demonises the other, and rallies its own side by doing so. By painting your adversary as “evil,” you not only make reconciliation unlikely, you make it immoral. How can you compromise with evil? Say that we will become a little bit less good if you will become a little less evil? And if the prevailing wisdom on one side is that the other is evil, those who would talk to them, or even see them as fellow human beings, are seen as subverting the war effort.
Most parties to conflict idolize those who die for their cause. We see the names and photos of US forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan scrolling across our television screens with the caption “Fallen Heroes.” Our fallen heroes are their martyrs; we revere our heroes, they revere their maryrs.
For me, though, it’s not the fighters who are the most courageous, it’s the peacemakers. I am sure it takes courage for a soldier, however heavily armed, to walk the streets of Baghdad or Hebron. It must take courage to strap on a bomb, and kill yourself for what your believe in. But it takes remarkable courage too to do as members of the Bereaved Families Forum have done. Armed only with their humanity and consciences, they have risked the scorn, the accusations of betrayal, and even violence from their own compatriots by advocating reconciliation and peace. And what enormous strength it must have taken for Robi to reach out to the family of the sniper who killed her son, and to ask to meet with him. “Giving aid and comfort to the enemy” is the accusation made against such people, and a damning accusation is it.
But surely giving comfort to anyone is a good thing? Isn’t that what peace is all about?
Of interest:
The Bereaved Families Forum is but one of a variety of groups working for peace, human rights, reconciliation, or dialog in Israel-Palestine. Others include
There are lots of blogs that focus on various aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and on life in the region. They cover a huge variety of perspectives. Here’s a (very) random selection
- Palestine vs Israel “A personal view of the Palestinian-Israeli scene as viewed by a Palestinian living under occupation and looking forward to a better and peaceful future.”
- Little Green Footballs, voted a best Israel advocacy blog by readers of the Jerusalem Post
- Raiding Yousuf, Unplugged: diary of a Palestinian mother
I agree with the fact that the ones with the most courage are the ones who are looking for peace. They are the most needed for this conflict because if it has gotten tot he point where eleven year-old’s are advocating for violence, then who knows how long this conflict could unnecessarily go on for?
I understand that the peacemakers are trying hard for something they believe in, but from what I can see of this conflict, it doesn’t look to be helping much at all. Maybe it makes them feel better as a human being, but as far as the conflict as a whole, I don’t think it does much. If they seem to possess this great bravery, why don’t they rally more and more people to help them or actually do something tangible and memorable with it? I don’t mean to be a downer, but if they have the bravery and want to make a difference, then I think they should be making leaps and bounds instead of baby steps.