LE MONDE'S OPINION – ONE TO WATCH
This documentary, co-created by Palestinians and Israelis, on the colonization in the West Bank brings to mind another: One made in 2013, on the same subject, by a duo of the same miraculous nature. The film was called 5 Broken Cameras, co-directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, and it depicted how the State of Israel aimed to cut the village of Bil'in off from its arable land by building a separation wall, and to give the land to a neighboring Jewish settlement. The film told the story by weaving together the five years of struggle; Emad's five cameras, broken by Israeli soldiers, and the first five years of his son's life, all of which concluded with the Israeli high court declaring that the wall's path was illegal.
No Other Land has neither the time-based structure nor the rugged poetry of Burnat and Davidi's film, let alone its happy ending. For the most part, it depicts the radicalization of an Israeli government, henceforth won over by a far-right ideology, becoming committed to the use of force and the refusal of dialogue, and which has been hastening the advance of West Bank settlements as much as it can. Ultimately, the film portrays the tragedy that is the mutual non-recognition that poisons this land's inhabitants – which has been heightened to a new level of cruelty since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and its consequences – and which thrusts them into seemingly endless misery.
Basel, a 28-year-old from Massafer Yatta, a Bedouin community comprised of some 20 villages in the southern West Bank, is the real "hero" of this film – an activist and the son of an activist. Armed with his camera, or else speaking to the camera operated by Israeli filmmaker Rachel Szor, he chronicles the resistance of the local farmers, whose presence on their land has, since the 1980s, been declared illegal by Israel, which claims to want to set up a military zone in the area. Contrary to what happened in Bil'in, in 2022 the Israeli high court ultimately authorized their eviction.
The army wasted no time in bulldozing the village, in order to make life there impossible. Houses, pipes, electricity poles: Everything was destroyed. Massafer Yatta, whose inhabitants would become troglodytes, was destroyed seven times and rose from its ashes seven times, being rebuilt from odds and ends. The film portrays stubbornness, that of both the demolition workers and the villagers, through a succession of tough situations, harassment, exhaustion, merciless absurdity and courage. Since October 7, 2023, the settlers' determination, as well as the violence to which they have resorted, under the army's protection, have ratcheted up a notch in this colonization process.
You have 24.64% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.