Palestine And The Cinema

Palestine From The Perspective Of The Arab Cinema

Zionism appears to be a militarily severe force, which depends on the power of imperialism. But history does not stop at setbacks or catastrophes of peoples. The course of history must be set right again as the oppressed people begin to revolt and rise to regain their rights. Algeria was subjected to French occupation for over 131 years during which the occupiers sought to change the identity of the people by destroying their national and linguistic affiliations. But the Algerian revolutionary struggle to regain the country's identity forced the occupation out. Another example is China which did not spare any effort to restore its occupied territories using all the peaceful and military means available to it.

The Cause of the Arabs
The Arabs have always considered what happens in the occupied Palestinian homeland as a primarily Arab concern. The Arab people everywhere have carried arms to defend the Palestinian homeland. In addition, intellectuals of various specialties have used the written word, song and image to defend the Palestinian cause, champion it or revive its memory. The Arab cinema did not lag in communicating an image of this cause to the audience everywhere.

Having already dealt with the role of documentaries in championing the cause, explaining its dimensions and exposing the brutal and suppressive practices of the ferocious Zionist entity against the Palestinian people inside the occupied territories, we turn now to the image of the Palestinian cause in feature films as presented in the Egyptian, Syrian and Algerian cinema.

After the 1948 aggression against the land of Palestine, the Egyptian cinema presented a number of films on this event, most notably A Girl from Palestine and Nadia in 1949. The story and screenplay of the first was written by Aziza Amir, the founder of the Egyptian cinema, who also produced the film and played the leading role. The director was Mahmoud Zulfiqar. The film establishes a link between Egypt and Palestine on the basis that the Arab people and families have extensions in various Arab countries. It portrays an Arab family which has Egyptian and Palestinian members. Salma, The daughter of the Palestinian branch of the family seeks refuge with her Egyptian relatives after her Palestinian home village is brutally sacked by Zionist forces who kill her parents. She moves to live with her relatives in Egypt. She volunteers to work as a nurse with the Red Crescent looking after the soldiers and commandoes who have returned from the war.

The son of the Egyptian family, Adel, who is an army pilot, gets seriously injured in a plane crash during an attack on Tel Aviv. Thinking that he is no longer fit to love and get married because of his injury, he tries to draw away from Salma whom he loves. The girl however insists that she loves him and that they are bound to be together for life.

The film reflects the strong ties between the Arab peoples of Palestine and Egypt. It portrays them as having common roots, and a common fate. It shows how help comes from relatives who are spread across both countries, a meaning which was consolidated in the wars of 1956 and 1967.

Nadia, also having Aziza Amir as producer and leading actress, was based on a story and a screenplay by Youssef Goher, and directed by Fatin Abdel Wahhab. The film deals with an Egyptian officer who dies in a battle with the Zionist enemy. His sister joins a commando group, gets captured but does not inform on her fellow strugglers. She manages to escape and is helped by a group of Palestinian nuns. The film stresses the role of the Egyptian army in defending the Palestinian cause, as well as the role of medical and commando volunteers. The role of the Palestinian nuns in helping the Egyptian commando woman is also highlighted to stress the relationship between the Palestinian Christians and the Arabs.

There are other films which deal indirectly with the Palestinian issue. Give me Back my Heart touches on the issue of the defective weapons scandal, its effect on the Egyptian army in 1948 and the consequent emergence of the Free Officers. Port Said deals with the 1956 aggression against Suez. It associates the Zionist forces with imperialism and stresses their combined attempt to destroy the second generation of the Arab people after having made homeless an earlier generation in 1948.

Sayyed Saeed's The Captain, 1997, whose events take place in Port Said, portrays the migration of a large number of Palestinians to the city. An Egyptian child develops a friendship with a Palestinian child who has lost his family. Faced with the growing friendship, the Egyptian mother decides to raise the child in spite of the fact that she has difficulties providing for her own family. The implication is that Egypt has undertaken to champion the Palestinian cause in spite of her problems because of her belief in a common destiny for both peoples.

48 Hours in Israel, 1998 (screenplay by Bassiouni Othman, director Nader Galal), tells of the adventures of a woman who gets kidnapped in Palestine by the Mossad who are after a microfilm containing classified military information. The events of the film take place in the present time and are intended to highlight the skills of the Egyptian intelligence service and its superiority to its Israeli counterpart. The same theme is recapitulated in two other films by the same director: The Execution of a Dead Man, 1985, and The Pit of Treachery, 1987.

A Girl from Israel will be discussed after the following overview of the Syrian contribution in this regard.

The Syrian Cinema
The Syrian cinema presented various films on the Palestinian issue, including Taysir Abboud's Alarms, Anton Remi's For the Sake of Palestine and Mohamed Salih Al-Kayyali's Three Operations inside Palestine.

The best film in this category is probably Men under the Sun, 1970, which combines three independent short features films linked together by one motif. The first story of the trio, Pains of Labor, directed by Nabil Al-Malih, deals with an Arab who, together with his wife, is forced to flee his home village under the effect of the Zionist terrorism. During their escape the woman goes into labor and dies as she gives birth to her baby. The father carries the newly born child, a symbol of hope, and continues on his journey.

The second story, Encounter, directed by Marwan Muazzin, deals with the encounter of a Palestinian man with a European woman biased by Zionist propaganda and discourse. Her interaction with the Palestinian gradually makes her realize her earlier misconceptions, as she begins to see how the Palestinian cause is a just one.

The third story, Birth, directed by Mohamed Shahin, portrays a young man who is torn between his theoretical support of the popular resistance and his rejection of the practical exercise of this resistance. He ends his dilemma by joining the resistance but dies courageously in a battle with the enemy.

Taken together, the three pieces stir stagnant waters. The film urges Palestinian young people to carry arms, stressing that there is no time for personal problems or oscillation between support and rejection of Palestinian action. It also makes the point that the cause must be presented to the international public opinion properly to win its support.Other Syrian productions include Khalid Hamadah's The Knife, 1971, a film based on a story by Ghassan Kanafany, which deals indirectly with one aspect of the issue.

Tawfiq Salih's Cheated, 1973, based on another story by Kanafani, is the best film that has dealt with the Palestinian cause and the displaced Palestinians who yearn for a safe haven and a secure life. Three Palestinians dream of going to Kuwait to enjoy a safe and comfortable life, which to them is paradise. They make a deal with a tank-car driver to whisk them across the desert to Kuwait by hiding in the tank, but they die short of their destination out of the intense heat inside the tank. The film is a cry against the negligence and passivity from which Palestinians in exile are suffering.

Borhan Aluba's Kafr Qassim, 1974, exposes the terrorist and inhuman face of the Zionist state. It presents documents and reconstructs the massacre which overtook the villagers of Kafr Qassim on 29/10/1956. In 1976, Salah Dehn directed his Heroes are Born Twice which deals with the Zionist occupation of Palestine and the resistance of the Arab people. The events are filtered through the consciousness of a child who narrates what happened to him personally with the Zionist invaders. The events take place after the 1967 aggression and the occupation of Gaza.

Although these films came as a swift and direct reaction to specific events, they did not deal in any way with the root causes of the problem or the role of imperialist powers. The Zionist enemy in these films is only portrayed in terms of its brute force and its treacherous tendency to kill the unarmed.

In 1953 Nyazi Mustafa directed The Land of Heroes, a film of mediocre quality, which deals with the son of a Pasha who volunteers to fight in the war of Palestine to escape his own personal problems. He loses his eyesight as a result of the explosion of a defective weapon he was using in action. He is taken care of by a Palestinian girl and they become strongly attached to each other. The father commits suicide out of his feeling of guilt, because he had been the supplier of the arms which caused his son's debility.

The film raises the question of the defective weapons with the war of Palestine serving as a background. It does not fail to note the association between the Palestinian cause and Egypt through the love story between the Palestinian girl and the Egyptian volunteer. Another Egyptian production is May God Be with Us, 1955, directed by Ahmed Badrakhan (original novel by Ihsan Abdel Quddus, with dialogue by Sami Daoud). It shows how army officers discover that the monarchy in Egypt is the cause behind corruption in the army and the whole country and that it bears prime responsibility for the defective weapons scandal. The youths, the flowers of the country, have been sent to their doom against an enemy that is sophisticatedly armed. The Free Officers organization emerge. The revolution manages to clean out the country, but still has the responsibility of purging Palestine of the usurping enemy which is now lying across the borders. Although the film does not offer a clear and fully-fledged view of the reasons behind the military defeat, and does not refer to the role of imperialist powers, it remains one of the attempts to link internal corruption to the defeat on the war front.

Kamal Al-Sheikh's Land of Peace, 1957 (story by Helmi Halim, with screenplay and dialogue by Ali Al-Zurqani), is the first film whose events take place in the occupied Palestinian territories. It deals with a commando group member who, together with his colleagues, plans to destroy oil depots of the Zionist enemy. He gets injured and is offered shelter by the local people of a Palestinian village. He is joined by Palestinian commandoes to achieve his end, and the depots are finally destroyed. The film is significant in that is stresses the importance of an integrated Palestinian-Egyptian action to overcome the Zionist enemy.

Other Contributions
Cinematic production which deals with the Palestinian issue is not confined to Egypt and Syria. There are some other contributions like Iraq's Bitter Winter, directed by Shukry Gamil. A joint Algerian-PLO production, We Will Be Back, 1972, was adapted by Moahmed Selim Riyad and Ahmed Rashedi, who also wrote the dialogue from a foreign screenplay, and co-directed the film with M. Riyad. The film deals with the sacrifice of a member of the resistance who pretends to surrender to the commander of an enemy group besieging his fellow commandoes. As he approaches the commander he detonates a hand grenade which kills them both. The commandoes thus manage to break through their siege amid enemy panic and confusion.

A Girl from Israel
The last contribution comes from Egypt. For the first time, a film suggests that there will be no peace unless the occupied territories are restored to the Arab people, i.e., Egypt and Syria, with part thereof returned to the Palestinian Authority. In spite of the resounding note of denunciation in the film, it marks a departure from all previous productions which proceed from the idea that the Palestinian people have the right to restore their entire national land.

Recognition of the enemy has now become a fact on the ground: there will be no peace unless the foes shake hands - an invalid argument because it holds violator and the violated to be on a par with each other. This is not the mistake of the cinema but of the political conditions in the life of the Arab people, who have become so weak that they no longer dare to deal outspokenly with the root causes of the issue.

Palestine will never be restored except by the same means by which it has been usurped. Only then, may the image of the Arabs on the screen be changed