Honest talks needed to help suffering Palestinians

What you need to know:

  • The film highlights the psychological impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on young people caught between their desire to fulfill their personal dreams and their aspiration for a homeland that they can call their own.
  • Directed by the award-winning filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad, the film is a story of love and betrayal among four young Palestinians, one of whom (Omar) is captured, tortured and imprisoned by Israeli authorities for staging an attack on an Isreali soldier.

I recently had the opportunity to watch the film Omar in Nairobi, as part of a festival showcasing Palestinian cinema.

The film highlights the psychological impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on young people caught between their desire to fulfill their personal dreams and their aspiration for a homeland that they can call their own.

Directed by the award-winning filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad, the film is a story of love and betrayal among four young Palestinians, one of whom (Omar) is captured, tortured and imprisoned by Israeli authorities for staging an attack on an Isreali soldier.

The film, which some critics have also described as a “tender love story” and an “expertly crafted thriller”, is centred around the main character Omar, who works as a baker on the Israeli side of the tall wall that separates the occupied territories from Israel, and who regularly scales this wall to meet his love interest Nadia.

The friends eventually get caught up in a nefarious net set up by Israeli security agents who enrol Omar as a spy through trickery, lies and the ever-present threat of extermination.

The friendship between Omar and his friends is severely tested as a result.

The tragic ending offers neither hope nor redemption to people on both sides of the conflict.

The film lays bare the dystopian world of paranoia, fear and suspicion inhabited by people on both sides of the conflict.

It shows that wars and conflicts not only physically destroy countries, they also wreak havoc on people’s psychology.

External aggression

People who have survived civil war or external aggression carry their scars not just on their bodies, but in their minds as well.

Some suffer from “survivor’s guilt”. Those who collaborate with the aggressor to save their lives or those of their families have to live with the knowledge that they betrayed their own people.

The emotional toll of conflict does not escape those doing the killing either.

People on both sides of the enemy line have been known to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders and a deep sense of remorse.

If the conflict is long, protracted and complicated like the one between Israel and Palestine, the scars can take generations to heal or may not heal at all.

Discriminated against

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission (ESCWA) recently described the state of Israel as an “apartheid” system where Palestinians in both Israel and in the occupied territories are systematically discriminated against.

In a report titled, “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid”, the authors claim that Palestinian citizens of Israel are oppressed on the basis of not being Jewish, while Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are governed by military law.

Palestinians in East Jerusalem experience discrimination in access to education, health care, employment, residency and building rights, while Palestinian refugees and exiles are prohibited from returning home.

When Israel objected to the report’s findings, the head of ESCWA, Rima Khalif, was forced to resign after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced the report and ordered that it be removed from the commission’s website.

Biggest recipients

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN said that the report was “an attempt to smear and falsely label the only true democracy in the Middle East”.

This saga has once again highlighted the fact that the UN and its Secretary-General can be, and often are, manipulated by influential UN member states.

Israel is the United States’ strongest ally and is among the biggest recipients of American aid, amounting to more than $3 billion a year.

Every time Israel drops bombs on Palestinians, it uses US-made fighter planes.

Although the UN has passed several resolutions condemning Israel’s actions against Palestinians, these resolutions are not legally binding, and, therefore, cannot be used to impose sanctions on Israel – only the UN Security Council can do that, but since the US has veto powers in the Security Council, there is little chance that it will come down hard on its ally.

It is almost 70 years since the Zionist movement established a “Jewish state” in a place where Arabs were the majority and owned most of the land.

The mutual suspicion and conflict between Palestinians and Israelis will not end until there is an honest discussion about the injustices that the former have had to endure since then.

Rasna Warah is a writer and editor with more than 20 years of experience