DAN WEBSTER:
In today’s world, there seems to be little room, if any, for compromise. Example? Either you’re for abortion rights or against them. Either you’re on Ukraine’s side or you support Russia’s war aims. Either you’re MAGA or… well, you get the point. Gray areas don’t seem to matter—or even exist.
In this embittered climate, one of the most divisive of issues involves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Generally speaking you’re either on one side or the other, with little or no room for anything resembling a middle ground.
To be clear, little about this particular clash can be summed up simplistically. Just the other day one of my longtime friends, an intelligent and educated guy, texted me that the whole situation has him, he explained, “conflicted.” “Jews deserve a homeland,” he wrote, “but so do Palestinians.”
That’s been the ongoing issue long before the creation of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948. A quick internet search can acquaint anyone with the basic facts, which date back millennia. More to the point, they involve events before and after World War I, Great Britain’s assuming control of the area in 1920, the cry for a Jewish homeland that grew ever louder following World War II and the 1947 United Nations Special Commission on Palestine that recommended the partition of the contested land into Jewish and Arab states.
As if any of that, but particularly the founding of Israel, settled things. The various wars and continual struggles that remain to this day, most recently the 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel through Israel’s subsequent decimation of Gaza, make it clear that the issue is far from resolved.
And clearly enough, they remain staunchly partisan—as the Oscar-nominated documentary feature film No Other Land makes abundantly clear. One of the five Best Documentary Feature nominees, the film is a joint Israeli-Palestinian project that is co-directed by two Palestinians (Basel Adra and Hamdan Bailal) and two Israelis, (the journalist Yuval Abraham and cinematographer Rachel Szor). Yet the film’s point of view, which was developed over five years, is clearly pro-Palestinian.
The setting is Israel’s West Bank, specifically the grouping of 19 different hamlets known collectively as Masafer Yatta. At the center is Adra, one of the co-directors, who we see both aiding his father in running his village’s gas station and working as an activist for Palestinian rights.
The Israeli journalist Abraham, who writes for various independent media outlets, drives from his home frequently to join Adra, a fact that Adra sees as a barrier to their ever becoming true friends. Abraham can drive into Masafer Yatta, but Adra and other Palestinians are banned from driving into Israel.
Together the filmmakers record Israeli forces systematically destroying parts of Adra’s village. The area was originally scheduled to be bulldozed in the 1990s but was delayed 22 years by a lawsuit. Eventually, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the planned demolition.
Thus we see scene after scene of machines razing houses, a random pigeon coop and at least one school, with the only reason given that the Israeli army needs the area for tank training. (At one point, though, we’re told that a secret Israeli document was unearthed that stated another reason, which was to “block Arab villagers from expanding.”)
The filmmakers provide no talking heads, no alternative points of view excusing—or even explaining—Israel’s actions. They do, though, provide a stark picture of what happens when two cultures lay claim to the same land, citing dueling rationales based on history, tradition and religious doctrine.
All that is likely to seem unfair to some viewers. But these are documentary filmmakers whose main interest is to tell the truth as they see it. Not that what they do will necessarily lead to lasting change. When Israeli Abraham complains that his stories aren’t getting enough attention, Palestinian Adra glumly observes something we should all be able to understand.
“I feel you’re a little enthusiastic,” he says, “as if you came to solve everything in 10 days and then go home. This has been going on for decades.”
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.