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Checkpoint: Masking a Sense of Loss
New
Directors/New Films Program
Checkpoint
Yoav Shamir, Israel, 2003, 80 m
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Checkpoint offers a unique, revealing look at both sides of life at checkpoints across Israel
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You
are tempted to lean towards the pro-Palestinian, or rather anti-Israeli
soldiers’ camp. At first glance Yoav Shamir’s provocative new film, Checkpoint—which had its North American premiere in early April at the 33rd
annual New Directors/New Films program in New York—seems to only highlight the
plight of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs trapped by the myriad of checkpoints
dotted across Israel.
But
appearances can be deceiving. Yes, the film sympathizes with what people under Israel’s oppressive thumb must endure. However, a deeper look reveals the somber
nuances of the young Israeli soldiers’ existence. Too often they are pawns in
the deadly battle for land and freedom.
Yes,
they are the ones in charge, and they exert their macho bravado and bullying
whims to a sickening extent over the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs trying to
live their lives through the checkpoints. But that bravado seems to mask a sense
of lost youth and confusion about what they do and why they must do it.
Checkpoint
offers a unique, revealing look at both sides of life at checkpoints across Israel. You witness the frustrations and hardship Palestinians tolerate just to do
basic things like go to the doctor, transport packages, visit sick loved ones,
go to school, and so on. It is a nasty, mixed-up, foul concoction of permits,
identification papers, changing rules and curfews, suspicion and humiliation
that are mind boggling. It is life without any controls—at the mercy of often
clueless soldiers clinging to a semblance of power.
Shamir,
an Israeli citizen, served in the army from 1989 to 1992 during the original
Palestinian Intifadah that, in a way, gave birth to the stifling checkpoints
present at every roadway in and out of Israeli cities and villages. He witnessed
first hand the suffering of Palestinians and how often naïve Israeli soldiers
try to exert some sort of control over the country’s constant state of chaos.
It
is a lose-lose situation on both sides—though probably more so for
Palestinians who are deprived of basic dignity and rights.
In
an effort to highlight the daily medium of checkpoint life (in contrast to
blatant media stories), Shamir, from 2001–2003, turned his camera onto
checkpoints across the country— Nablus, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Gaza Strip, and others all came under his quiet, unobtrusive scrutiny.
Shamir
was a one-man show, filming alone with one camera, no soundmen, and no technical
crew. He would stay four or five days at a time at various checkpoints until the
soldiers and those negotiating and pleading their way through them accepted him
as part of the scene. It was at such moments that the simple, daily, checkpoint
routines transformed into the crazy, maddening, provoking situations that they
really are.
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The director believes the film is far from being anti-military, citing the positive response it received in Israel |
We
find the opening scene in which two young soldiers lounge at their station on Jericho Road
in Nablus. As a car of Palestinians approaches, one soldier flippantly comments, “[Now]
we put on our show.” Another heart-wrenching scene shows a mother with her
three young sons trying to get home. An Israeli soldier checks her papers and
informs her that she needs a new permit, but her sons can go. She instructs the
oldest boy, perhaps nine or ten years old, to take his young brothers home while
she goes back to get the permit. The children cry woefully for their mother as
they are hustled off.
The
soldiers on checkpoint duty run the gamut of macho, chauvinistic Border Police
who hassle young girls coming through and comment, “The Jews are the best,”
and “We’re humans, they’re animals.
One
such young soldier’s irksome situation becomes eminently clear when he stops a
bus of school children. He orders the children off and searches the bus for
bombs. A pastor accompanying the children tells the soldier he just wants to
make sure the children are treated well at the checkpoint.
The
soldier waves the bus through but tells the pastor he must go back. The pastor,
satisfied that the children are fine, calmly accepts the decision and turns to
leave. Then the young Israeli soldier calls after him to take a photo. The
pastor says, “You take away your gun and take away your helmet, then it’s
ok. … With a gun, there’s no understanding and respect.” The soldier
agrees and they snap a photo together.
As
the pastor leaves, he gently tells the youth, “You just want your mother.”
The soldier agrees, “Yes, I just want to go home to my mommy.”
Such
scenes are vital in proving Shamir’s point that everyone connected to these
checkpoints suffers at one time or another. No doubt Palestinians and Israeli
Arabs receive the brunt of the torment, but some Israeli soldiers are also
duped. In a question and answer session after the film, Shamir said there is no
master plan involved in the function of the checkpoints. “One hand doesn’t
know what the other hand is doing.”
He
believes the film is far from being anti-military, citing the positive response
it received in Israel. “There was no censoring from the Israeli government,” Shamir said. In fact
the Israeli army has taken the film for instructional purposes.
“Both
sides are victims,” Shamir said. “Soldiers are very young. They don’t want
to be there. And the Palestinians should not have to endure what they do. I’m
not a politician,” Shamir noted. “I’d like one country for two nations.
But I’m not the one who decides on these things.”
For
more information visit www.filmlinc.com.
Dilshad D. Ali's writing reaches across the
United States to address lifestyle topics pertinent to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Ali has
covered movie premieres, film festivals, art exhibits, concerts, and numerous
other cultural stories, including the affect of September 11 on New York’s cultural landscape for IslamOnline. Ali, a 1997 University of Maryland
journalism graduate, resides in New York with her husband and two children.
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