Israelis and Palestinians Destroy the 'No Partner for Peace' Canard

By Evan Derkacz, AlterNet. Posted December 2, 2006.

Virtually everyone knows what the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will look like -- technically, at least. Still, it would take a healthy dose of political courage and a pile of luck for significant progress to occur anytime soon. The official charter of Palestine's elected leadership includes portions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, while Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert, recently appointed an anti-Arab racist with genocidal fantasies as his deputy prime minister. The Road Map is stalled and, governmentally speaking, the peace process has flatlined. But then little, if any, progress was ever born in government anyway.

Into this apparently hopeless situation comes Encounter Point, an award-winning feature film documenting the movements that bridge the Israeli-Palestinian divide on the ground, among the people most affected. Filmmakers Ronit Avni and Julia Bacha (cowriter and editor of Control Room) have trained a refreshingly sharp eye on the detail and meaning in their surroundings as well as in their subjects -- a regrettably rare trait in a political documentary. But the question of why art and politics have filed for a separation is a different story.

The Bereaved Families Forum, a major focus of the film's energies, is comprised of families from both sides, all of whom have suffered the death of one or more loved ones to the conflict. Rather than resort to more violence, these people have each asked themselves, in one form or another, what Robi Damelin does in the film: "So what do you do with this pain? Do you take it and look for revenge and keep the whole cycle of violence going, or do you choose another path to prevent further death and further pain to other parents?"

On the other side of the border lives Ali Abu Awwad, a young Palestinian man whose character almost doesn't work on paper. After years of opposing the Israeli Occupation in the stone-throwing era of the '80s and '90s, Awwad was in Saudi Arabia when he received the news that his brother had been killed by an Israeli soldier. Awwad was there, ironically, seeking medical treatment for an Israeli-delivered bullet-wound himself.

Having asked himself the question above, Awwad chose reconciliation, resisting pressure to do otherwise -- not to mention his reward: "great status" and "the right to hate." But Encounter's rich cast of characters goes beyond classical progressive heroes like Robi and Ali, to include the likes of Shlomo Zagman, a settlement-born Israeli who once advocated for the deportation of Palestinians to neighboring countries.

Zagman now heads up the more pragmatic-minded reconciliation group, Movement for Realistic Religious Zionism which seeks to convince religious Jews that reconciliation is in their best interest. The MRRZ is roughly akin to a moderate Democrat who argues that the War in Iraq must end because it was poorly planned and expensive, as opposed to being a fundamentally errant policy.

One of the reasons you can, and will, show this film to conservative members of your family is because it refuses to incapacitate itself with the hot-button issues of history and negotiations, opting to highlight the human side of the conflict. Frankly, this decision may piss off activists on both sides, but every person who watches the film will leave with an appreciation for the humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians, a sense that both people love their children, argue with their parents, are stubborn, and like food.

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Evan Derkacz an AlterNet editor and writer of PEEK, the blog of blogs.