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Checkpoint offers a unique, revealing look at both sides of life at checkpoints across Israel |
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.”
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