The West Bank comes to Sarajevo

Sarajevo, Monday August 20 2007

Israeli political activist Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s immensely moving and explosively emotional feature length documentary “Bil’in My Love” rightly deserves the description the man responsible for inviting it to Sarajevo gave it as “the discovery of the festival”.

Howard Feinstein, the former film editor of the Village Voice, New York, who programmes Sarajevo’s fabulous Panorama sidebar, used that description when he introduced the 84 minute film at Sunday’s screening here in Sarajevo.

An uncompromising expose of the brutal and aggressive tactics the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) troops use against the largely peaceful protests of Palestinian villagers, Israeli and international human rights activists in their fight to prevent the construction of the 28 foot tall section of the controversial Israeli state security wall that slices the village of Bil’in in half, the film won a five minutes standing ovation when it ended at Sarajevo’s capacityu packed Meeting Point cinema, with many in the audience wiping tears of empathy from their eyes.

The director has brought three of the Palestinian villagers with him – including farmer ‘Wagee’ Abdelfatah Burnat and his adult son Rani, wheelchair bound since an Israeli sniper’s bullet clipped his spinal chord at a protest demonstration in Jerusalem some years ago.

As Wagee, whose heartbreak over the loss of family olive groves dating back centuries is a key focus of the film, remarked in a reference to the difficulty of obtaining visas, “for a Palestinian to get out of Palestine is almost impossible.”

“We are so happy to meet with you in Sarajevo today,” he said. “Believe me, it is much easer for me to come to Sarajevo than to go to Jerusalem which is only 30km from Bil’in,” he said.

With 11 deaths directly associated with the fight against the building of the wall – declared illegal in 2004 by the International Court of Justice in the Hague but continued regardless by the Israeli government – and the thousands of injured - the weekly Friday protests of one tiny West Bank village against the local IDF troops is but a microcosm of the wider tragedy playing out there.

Some 3,000 Palestinian and 1,000 Israelis had died since 2000 when the second Palestinian Infitada – uprising – began.

“The film shows just a glimpse of what is happening in our village,” Wagee said.

“It is one small, poor village but it is very, very rich with hope and believe and very strong and powerful with the will to struggle and fight hard against injustice and for good.”

Hundreds of villagers have been imprisoned or fined and many hit by rubber bullets or gassed with tear gas and percussion grenades fired at them by the IDF troops – mostly without any provocation, the film shows.

In one telling incident recorded by 39 year old activist-filmmaker Shai, a non-violent demonstration organized by the village committee disintegrates into violence when some Palestinian youths begin stoning the Israeli soldiers.

At first the demonstrators appeal for calm, believing the boys to be from another village. It turns out they are actually Israeli agent provocateurs sent there to deliberately foment trouble.
It is the intimacy of Shai’s filmmaking – where he is both participant and observer and has no pretension to objectivity in what is a thoroughly partisan film - that is incredible for a film made in the often dangerous situations in the midst of such a bitter and intractable conflict. Some might call in propaganda, but it does not flinch from showing that some Palestinian youngsters do – of course – stone Israel soldiers. One IDF soldier loses his eye in an incident, sparking fears in the village that they may face live ammunition in revenge. It is, however, quite clear that the aggression virtually always comes first from the IDF side and that their commander, an otherwise thoughtful man who actually lives not far from the village – on the other side of the wall – does sometimes reach for tear gas, rubber bullerts and percussion grenades when his frustration at the myriad creative protests he faces gets the better of him.

The villagers of Bil’in are determined to resist with dignity, come what may.

“The villagers are fighting for their rights and for the rights of the whole world for all people to live with dignity,” Wagee noted of a conflict that has already taken 60% of the village’s historic lands, ripping out the olive groves on which the farmers depend for their livelihoods and stealing huge swathes of land for the illegal expansion of a nearby new Israeli settlement that will be protected by the massive barrier.

Dubbed an ‘apartheid barrier’ by opponents, director Shai – who grew up in a Zionist household, served in the Israeli army and worked in television before becoming politicized by a desire to understand why the Palestinians had risen up again in 2000 – says the film exposes the essential racism of a state that claims to be a democracy.

“The wall allows for new communities – mostly settlements of ultra orthodox right wingers – to spring up. I did not want to show these people in the film because that is not the true story. The story is that the government is sending these poor people to these new settlements – where apartments are cheap. Those living their do not have enough knowledge really about what is going on. They listen to what their Rabbis tell them and go there,” Shai remarked.

Asked how he was able to film so closely and intimately – often standing filming besides Israeli troops as they fired at Palestinians – Shai said that initially the troops assumed that as an Israeli he was on their side.

Later when they understood he was implacably opposed to the wall they continued to let him film because they thought what they “think what they are doing is OK” Shai said. “The attitude is ‘I am doing an important job, defending my country.”

That attitude to filmmakers and photographers has shifted now, Shai said and the IDF are a lot more sensitive about being filmed as they go about the brutal business of defending a barrier that is illegal under the Olso accords of the early 1990s and most international observers agree will make the job of creating Palestinian statehood and a lasting, peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict near impossible.

If you get a chance to see this film, don’t hesitate for a second: as Shai noted, it covers a conflict that many in Sarejevo can identify with from their own personal experience in the recent past.

Photographs from the struggle in Bil’in, taken by Rani Bornat – who was a ubiquitous presence on the front lines in his electric powered wheelchair – can be purchased on CD.

As Rani said – talking through Shai as the bullet that clipped his spine entered through his neck and affected his ability to speak clearly – “the other young people in the village told me I had already paid the price, but when I join the protests I feel young and proud and not just a disabled person but someone protecting his land.”

Basman Yasin, a member of the village committee that organizes the protests, noted that although the wall is now complete the fight goes on. A third international conference on the problem will take place at Bil’in in April 2008, he said.

For further information you can go to: www.Bilin-village.org and also to Israeil group Anarchists Against the Wall site www.awalls.org

Rani Burnat’s photographs of the protest can be obtained on cd-rom from Shai Carmeli-Pollak via email: kshai@o23.net

Two final little observations in today’s entry: Sarajevo is a joy of a festival, small enough to be intimate, big enough to be truly international.

Last night’s open air screening of Anton Corbjin’s beautiful shot black and white film “Control” – about the short, highly creative but ultimately tragic life of Ian Curtis, lead singer in iconoclastic late 1970s British band “Joy Division” – was simply superb.

Evocative and moving, Sam Riley who plays Curtis cut exactly the right note and had the perfect face for the role and the period. Alexandra Maria Lara, a rising young German-Romanian actress, who played his Belgian girlfriend (and is in real life his partner) was a striking screen presence. Samantha Morton who played Curtis’ much neglected wife Deborah was also spot on.

I never saw Joy Division play live – they were a Manchester band that played a few London gigs that were about to go on their first US tour in May 1980 when Curtis, suffering from epilepsy and marital despair uncompromisingly depicted in the movie, killed himself.

But that summer of 1980 has for me its own traumatic memories – my dear friend Debbie Young died in a car crash June 26 1980 at the age of 17 – and “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, released just a month before Curtis’ death – is part of the background track for my own life from that summer.

On a different tack, returning to my hotel yesterday afternoon I ran into feature competition jury president British actor Jeremy Irons as he arrived from the airport.

I’d last seen him some 15 years ago when I was doing a lot of writing about prison reform in the UK and was involved with the Prison Phoenix Trust, an Oxford-based organization that works with prisoners to encourage them to use their time inside to learn and practice yoga and meditation. One of its organizers, Sandy Chubb, had introduced me to Irons, one of the charity’s patrons, at a function held in St James Church, Piccadilly. My life and travels took my off to Russia soon after and I lost touch with the Prison Phoenix Trust, although I still read and refer to US writer Bo Lozoff’s excellent book on the theme, “We’re All Doing Time”, published by his US-based Prison Ashram Project and distributed free to prisoners by the British group.

There was not enough time for a lengthy conversation but Irons clearly recollected Sandy’s surname – which I could not – and is still involved in supporting the group’s work.

For more information see: http://www.philanthropycapital.org/Newsletter/Summer07/jeremy_irons.html and http://www.prisonphoenix.org.uk/why1.shtml and also http://www.humankindness.org/project.html