In his 1982 documentary Field Diary, the Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai took the temperature of life in the Israeli-occupied territories before and after the invasion of Lebanon.
Thirty-five years later, his new film, West of the Jordan River, takes him back there, in what is both a sequel, of sorts, to Field Diary, and a companion piece to Rabin, the Last Day, his 2015 account of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
The Israeli prime minister had come close to negotiating a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Speaking from the recently completed Cannes Film Festival, where he screened his latest work, Gitai explained the “very bad” political situation in Israel compelled him to make the film”.
“We have the most right-wing government ever in Israel,” he says.
“I think it’s doing a lot of harm to the country, but I also feel for it. So I think, ‘What can I do?’ I’m just a filmmaker, so I’m doing a film’.”
Rabin haunts the film like Banquo’s ghost. In a clip from an interview that Gitai conducted in 1994, the year before Rabin was murdered by Jewish law student Yigal Amir, the prime minister had said he would not allow extremists to derail the peace process between him and the Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat. But “finally they succeeded”, said Gitai, considering the present day.
In contrast to Rabin’s conciliatory tone, Tzipi Hotovely, the current deputy minister of foreign affairs, insisted that the occupation story is false.
“We are not occupying our own land,” she told Gitai, claiming that the dispute is not really about the 1967 borders, but the creation of Israel in 1948. Where are the opposing voices, politically speaking?
“Netanyahu is quite a talented guy,” said Gitai. “He managed to mash all opposition forces. So at this point, unfortunately, the only opposition to the current power are these dead men.”
He shows, however, there are dissenting voices – be it the journalists he interviews from the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz or those of activists attached to Breaking the Silence. Established by IDF veterans, the NGO collects confidential testimonies from soldiers about their experiences in the occupied territories, making the group a target for the government.
“They instructed all schools to never allow them to speak to young people,” said Gitai.
Less controversial is a group of Israeli and Palestinian mothers bound by the shared pain of having lost children to the conflict. They’ve transcended their differences and acknowledged their common humanity, echoing Rabin’s injunction to reach out to the enemy.
“Rabin was different because he was not a racist,” said Gitai. “He was a soldier, so when there was a war, he knew how to fight. But he didn’t have a racist attitude to the other side and this is necessary. It’s not only a question of concessions or territory, it’s a question of attitude and what kind of Middle East you want.” Extremism is the problem – on both sides.
Gitai reminds a Palestinian in the film that when Rabin withdrew troops from Jericho and most of the Gaza Strip in 1994, the action was met with “the worst Palestinian suicide attacks in Tel Aviv, allowing the ultra-right to delegitimise Rabin and eventually to kill him”.
West of the Jordan River doesn't offer any easy solutions. "I like freethinkers. So my films are, in a way, calling for interpretation, not consumption – they ask us to look at the situation, and Israelis and Palestinians, without prejudice.
“I am just an architect,” said Gitai, who holds a doctorate in architecture.
“I am into building bridges, and I am against people who want to burn bridges all the time.”
artslife@thenational.ae
