Last Wednesday I went to see a documentary at Al Kotob Khan (a bookshop in Maadi). I knew about the bookshop a while ago and wanted to go and check it out but didn’t have time. Then I knew about the movie night and found it a good chance to go and explore the place. After being lost for quite some time, I reached the place. I was lucky enough to get there just before the movie start. The movie is a short documentary named “This Palestinian Life” written and directed by Philip Rizk and its duration is only 28 min. As the film was introduced “It is about village stories of Sumoud “صمود’ and Nonviolent Resistance”. The movie was really good. I’ve seen quite a lot of documentaries about Palestine; mainly on Nile News. Most of them were great but I can’t compare them with Philip’s film as they’re professionals while this is Philip’s first movie. However, the distinguished thing about this documentary is that it talked about Palestinian villages in ‘Al Dafa’ almost never mentioned in the news and other documentaries. I was affected by the movie very much. I even had tears in my eyes more than once. It has been a while since I last saw something about Palestine or heard its news in details. Actually I was feeling really guilty because of that and still am. After the movie we began a discussion about Philip, the movie, Palestine etc. then we found ourselves talking about Egypt and its role; especially concerning Rafah access point. The lady who was managing the discussion said that we can do nothing more and that isn’t it enough that they broke into our lands and threatened our national security! I was shocked by her words and so I immediately replied “how do you know for sure that they broke into the borders, this is what the media conveyed”. She replied that a friend of hers is a reporter and was there and told her what happened. I didn’t reply back because I didn’t want to tell her may be your friend is a liar or just didn’t interpret what happened right. Later I thought of many other things to convince her that she is getting the picture wrong. For example, they may have broken into our borders but this was because of their despair. We didn’t open the borders from ourselves and left them trapped to die. And really I don’t see how they represented a threat to our national security! I remember that at that time some voices began to say that they were planning to invade our lands and that there is a plan from Israel to let them populate Sinai! I regard all this as nonsense because if they were planning to leave and populate another place they’d have done so a long time ago and Israel would have been more than willing to help. And what force does to the Palestinians have to invade us? Their stones! And why don’t we feel threatened by the Israelis who every once in a while shoot one of our poor soldiers or Sinai citizens “accidentally”. The last time as I remember, they even shot a little girl, and our government stood still. Till now I get very angry whenever I remember all the things I should have said and didn’t. Anyhow, I’m now relieved that I said them in a way. One of the interesting things a girl of the group said was that we’re indeed responsible for Palestine because when it was first lost in 1948 it was under our protection and 1976 when it was lost again it was under Jordan’s protection (I shall check if this piece of info is correct or not). She also said that Sinai was returning to us anyway and the fact that we took it back completely through negotiations was a game played by the Israelis, to keep us way from the Palestinian cause in return, and that we played their game...An interesting point of view indeed and actually whether this point of view is valid or not, they’ve indeed succeeded in keeping us away from the cause. One of things said by the lady managing the discussion and also made me nervous again was that Palestinians are now trying to negotiate while they refused it when they had a chance when Al Sadat offered that in Camp David. Fortunately a young man replied with enthusiasm that this was better for their dignity because Palestine is theirs and no one negotiates to get his own right and that it is better for them to die everyday than to trade their land with anything (the lady didn’t reply back). In my way home, I was thinking of how ignorant I became of the Palestinian cause and how I need to read more about the history; especially Camp David because almost all I know about it is “heard” information which is usually not as reliable as “read” information. Do you know a good point to start?
22/11/08
No comments:
Post a Comment