We had expected that film for decades and we finally get it. The absolute irresponsibility of the English in Palestine, the horrendous tragedy of nazism symbolized by the concentration camps as the final solution to the Jewish problem, the extreme barbarity of the extremist Jewish groups, the naive complacent blindness of many on both sides, these are the main reasons why the creation of Israel was more tragic than it should have been. Instead of a multicultural and multi-ethnic state, Isarel was founded as a Jewish state, that is to say a state whose definition was purely religious. For millenia the Jews and the Arabs had lived in normal peaceful relations, except when the Christians decided to come and crusade around in the Middle East, but suddenly the absolute absurdity of the international community was to find the berserk compromise of splitting Jerusalem in two, as a collateral decision of the creation of a Jewish state. Since 1948 the situation has little changed and it is war after war, a quasi permanent state of war. The film is admirable because it follows the historical situation through the eyes of a few young people who knew and loved one another deeply before coming to Palestine, in fact in New York, one Arab, three Jews and one Christian. It thus becomes the story of the uprooting of these friendships and loves, the impossible uprooting that dramatizes every step in this struggle, on both the Jewish and the Arab sides, and makes it become little by little more and more cosmic in the emotional intensity it assumes day after day, night after night. To marry the woman you love in the very last five minutes of her life erases any religious dimension in the ceremony that only becomes the mark of the deepest suffering of all : the suffering of a hope that seems to glide away with a sneer from your grip, especially when one of the witnesses of this Jewish wedding is the Arab friend of the two aspiring husband and wife and the son of the leader of the Arab community who was killed in the fight by the very bridegroom. This is a rewriting of the impossible love of so many tragedies, and first of all Romeo and Juliet, but in such a different context that it becomes a divine surprise that can easily lead to the rebirth of the hope that may have died in the meantime, but a hope that lives and strives in our own minds that one day soon Jerusalem will finally no longer be cut by a wall, that one day Palestine will be one again, in a way or another, for both the Jews and the Arabs, equal in dignity, equal in history, equal in faith and equal in love. When will dates be shared again and the agenda of Palestine be moving along one unified line. Here is the film we had all hoped would come one day like the prophet announcing the real Second Coming of peace on this earth for all the children of the only and yet multiple, or even absolutely non-religious, God of all men and women of good faith and quivering heart. We know it should be soon, but how soon we don't know. Suffering has been bad enough for it to stop now, at once, instantly, immediately. That is at least my deepest wish because we all have to love the Jews and the Arabs as our direct soul-brothers. But there are so many bitter intentions among us that love may wither away and eventually even die.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne