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Maureen
Clare Murphy
Capturing the
fragments of a land shattered by politics, history, and colonialism,
Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Israel-Palestine, clocks
in at about four and a half hours.
 The
film's length is epic-worthy, but it allows the filmmakers to
present oral
history from a wide variety of people who live along the 1947
partition line, while at the same time allow for minutes-long
footage of the monotonous grey concrete wall that quietly runs along
one of the region's main roads. By portraying both the divide of the
physical landscape and that of the humans that inhabit it, viewers
receive a fuller understanding of this conflicted part of the world.
Like the text at the beginning of the film indicates, Route 181,
a collaborative effort between Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan and his
Palestinian peer Michel Khleifi, is truly a cinematic journey.
Viewers meet Israelis and Palestinians of a wide variety of
backgrounds and politics. Disillusioned Israeli Jews of Moroccan
descent wish they had never emigrated to Israel in the first place,
while adolescent Palestinian citizens of Israel, because they are
educated with an Israeli curriculum, squabble over whether they are
Palestinian or Israeli. This is what the film does best, and why it
is four and a half hours long -- it introduces to its audience,
through extended interviews with various Israelis and Palestinians,
the nuanced complexity of those people who live along the green
line.
One of the common criticisms of the one-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that it could never happen because
the two parties hate each other. What this film shows is that there
is indeed deep racial hatred, but amongst Israelis towards
Palestinians, not the other way around. An Israeli construction
manager says, "We always say that a good Arab is a dead Arab,"
completely unashamed of his naked racism. What complicates this is
that the man espousing such hatred is a Moroccan Jew.
A young Palestinian man living with his mother in the Negev says
that people in Israel say death to the Arabs, but if a Palestinian
were to write death to the Jews on the street just once, there would
be an outrage. He adds, the real relationship of conflict is one of
"occupiers and the occupied," rather than "Jews versus Arabs." And
as the camera shoots the view from the filmmakers' car, the audience
is shown signs that say "the Palestinian state is in Jordan" and
"crush Palestinians to end the war."
One Jewish Israeli woman, who works at a cafe postered with images
of Israeli military aircraft, tells the filmmakers that her shop
used to belong to an Arab, and that she regrets that the Arab homes
weren't destroyed when the area was colonized. Annoyed with the old
Arabs who wander around in the homes, she says that she would like
to see the land rid "of that cancer," referring to the indigenous
Palestinian population. She adds that there will be no peace "as
long as we're here," a disturbing but not isolated attitude present
in Israel
that suicide is preferable to being neighbors with the Palestinians.
None of the Palestinians featured in the film share the racism of
many of the Israelis interviewed. Palestinian after Palestinian
recalls a time when Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together
harmoniously, religion being a non-issue. One Palestinian woman
peasant says of the earlier Jewish immigrants, "They came here and
we welcomed them," but recognizes how Palestinians were and continue
to be pushed off of their land.
Many of the Israelis in the film fail to acknowledge the root of the
conflict to be the colonization of the land and the expulsion of its
indigenous population. A former Haganah officer repeatedly retorts
"who invaded whom?" when one of the filmmakers challenges him on his
military exploits. By focusing on how Arab states invaded the newly
established state of Israel in 1948, the old man misses the point --
it was because the land was being occupied and cleansed by a foreign
presence that the violence was instigated.
Other Israelis
deflect all responsibility to the Palestinians by insisting that
because Arabs rejected the U.N. partition plan in 1947, Israelis
should feel no guilt for demolishing Arab towns and denying the
Palestinians their right to return home. Another elderly Jewish
Israeli tells how he helped kill Arabs and ran women and children
off the land in 1948. He said the actions were part of "Operation
Matate," matate meaning broom. The operation was given the name
"because we swept out the Arabs."
When the man refuses to accept responsibility for the war, saying
that his actions were just because the Zionists accepted the
partition and the Arabs didn't, the filmmaker asks him if he knows
the Biblical story of Solomon, who recognized the true mother of a
disputed baby to be the one who refused to split the child in two.
The Israeli man, not initially recognizing that he's falling into
the filmmaker's trap, then insists that the Arabs were killed "for
our own survival."
Of course, not all of the Jewish Israelis portrayed are as ignorant
as those just described. An aging Polish Jew, who seems
disillusioned with what the state of
Israel
has turned into, remembers how the old settlements didn't displace
the Arabs. "We came as neighbors," he says. And an Iraqi Jew
storeowner says he would have happily lived with Arabs, and vice
versa. "Some people in this country ... possibly don't want peace,"
he observes.
But it is telling just how total detachment from history pervades
the Israelis in the film. One man gives an upbeat talk about how his
historic home is adorned with Arabic script on the walls, but then
insists "there were no Arabs here," asking, "what do you hope to do
by filming ruins?"
The film also potrays gulfs between different segments of the
Israeli population. In a particularly memorable scene at an
integration center, unsmiling Ethiopian Jews sit on folding chairs,
unimpressed by the white Jews playing cheerful songs on a recorder
and accordion. The Israeli woman presiding over the integration
ceremony brashly asks the crowd if they know any Hebrew, without any
response, and then instructs them in Hebrew to hurry up and dip
their apples in honey and to drink some wine, as if she were talking
to a group of grade schoolers.
Route 181 does assume knowledge of the history of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so it might be difficult for newcomers
to the conflict to access the film. But those familiar with the
Palestinian narrative will find all three of the film's 84-minute
segments totally compelling, because the filmmakers don't bother
explaining and rationalizing the Palestinians' grievances (although
Palestinian voices are still an important part of the film).
Instead, they cut right to the chase, interrogating the Israelis on
their attitudes that are often incompatible with peaceful
resolution. The filmmaker's sympathies towards the Palestinians are
clear, and it can be easily inferred that they favor the one-state
solution.
It is not without significance that the filmmaker's titled their
route after the United Nations resolution that divided the land,
splitting it in two. And by using the Solomon metaphor more than
once, it is safe to assume that Sivan and Khleifi think it would be
better for Israelis and Palestinians to live together rather than
apart. But the filmmakers realize that those Jewish Israelis who
place a purely Jewish state over coexistence with the Palestinians
are an obstacle to their preferred solution, and the film is
determined to bring those attitudes to the forefront.
Maureen Clare Murphy, a recent graduate from the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago, is Arts, Music, and Culture Editor for EI
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