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FILM: What a Palestinian Girl Saw Through Her Window

Aline Cunico and Kanya D'Almeida

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 2011 (IPS) - At the 331st meeting of the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People held at United Nations headquarters Thursday, delegates made speeches most likely doomed to be lost in the abyss of countless Security Council resolutions, numerous rulings by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the basic provisions of the Geneva Conventions.

Just a few days earlier, a well-known filmmaker had premiered his latest movie ‘Miral’ at the U.N. General Assembly Hall, hoping perhaps that art rather than dry politics could spark a new discourse of justice in the Middle East.

Adapted from award-winning journalist Rula Jebreal’s autobiographical novel of the same name, Julian Schnabel’s ‘Miral’ chronicles four decades of historical upheaval in the Middle East, beginning with the birth of the Israeli state in 1948 and ending with the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords – a set of promises that Israel is yet to honour – at the tail end of the 1990s.

One day prior to the event, the Israeli Mission made public a letter of complaint addressed to Joseph Deiss, the president of the U.N. General Assembly, protesting the use of the GA hall for such a “highly politicised event”.

“We are not aware of any other films with such contentious political content that have received this kind of endorsement from the President of the GA,” wrote Ambassador Haim Waxman, deputy permanent representative of Israel.

The statement went on to claim “the use of GA Hall for [this] premiere is inappropriate and undermines the credibility of the U.N.”


However, addressing his 1,000-strong audience before the screening, Schanbel stressed that his film was intended to present an alternative narrative about the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, a subject that has become so incendiary in the United States that open dialogue between the two sides has become all but impossible.

Though it has drawn the ire of both Israelis and Palestinians – from the latter for its ‘softness’ and the former for its ‘biased, one-sided’ depiction of the first Intifada – ‘Miral’ is a superbly crafted work that attempts to capture the rich, colourful, anguished, fragmented lives of women “whose destinies are forged by the seismic shifts that occur when Palestine is subsumed by this new Israeli nation”.

Jebreal’s searing journalist’s eye and Schnabel’s insinuating and insisting style combine to create a work that shatters preconceived notions of politics, stereotypes and allegiances in the region – according to the film’s description, it is not “merely about change; it aspires to achieve it.”

Addressing an intimate gathering of film critics at their joint residence in Lower West Manhattan, Jebreal discussed the importance of using art to break taboos. “After so many years of war, I have no faith in politicians…If we don’t do something about this, the only people left will be fanatics and extremists,” she said.

“Creating stereotypes is part of creating an enemy,” she said. “They cease to be humans and become merely symbols. One of the reasons I am happy that this movie was made is that it allows us to rethink the ‘Other’.”

Asked about the controversy surrounding the film, which will be released in the United States on Mar. 25, Jebreal said, “My goal as a journalist was to be objective. This story is what I saw through my window.” Jebreal added that she personally invited members of the Jewish community to the screening, but none responded.

Jebreal insisted on the vitality of education, a theme that occupied the core of the film’s matrix. “Ignorance can be easily manipulated,” she stressed. “An uneducated woman in Palestine has limited options… she either becomes a prostitute, or even worse, a suicide bomber…Education contains the seeds of rebellion.”

Schnabel reminded his critics that “art transcends nationality”.

“This is not a militant film,” he said. “It doesn’t promulgate any cause or promote any ideology. On the contrary it is a humanist film that captures my respect for human beings…[T]here’s no such thing as a good or bad victim.”

“Unfortunately, what my film shows happens every day in other parts of the world. Miral could be a Tibetan, a Chechen, a Kurd, a Tutsi or a Hutu,” he said.

The controversy over the screening of ‘Miral’ mirrors the limitations of the United Nations – and the clout of the United States’ veto power – in securing a just solution for the Palestinian people.

“It should be clear to all of us by now that the U.N. is not capable of upholding Palestinian rights or protecting the Palestinian people,” Richard Falk, the former Special Rapportuer on the situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, told IPS.

“So long as Israel has the unconditional support of the United States, and enjoys the benefits of the passivity toward the struggle by neighbouring Arab governments, the U.N. cannot do more than make gestures of opposition to Israeli flagrant violations of international law as in relation to the establishment and expansion of the settlements,” he said.

“[However], the U.N. remains for the Palestinian people a crucial symbolic site of struggle in the ongoing legitimacy war, which is being won on the global battlefield of public opinion and civil society activism,” Falk added. “The side that gains the high moral and legal ground eventually prevails in conflicts since 1945 despite being inferior in the hard power calculus of military capabilities.”

“The U.N. is an important player in this legitimacy war…it is important to recall the importance of this legitimising function performed by the U.N. in relation to the anti- colonial wars and the struggle against the South African apartheid regime,” he concluded.

 
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