CHICAGO, April 5,2010 (WAFA)-“This Palestinian Life”, a 28-minute documentary, surveys rural resistance in occupied Palestine: in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, in the Jordan Valley, and in the south Hebron hills, shown yesterday, Electronic Intifada Site said.
“The film was made by Egyptian-German journalist Philip Rizk, who lived in Palestine from 2004 to 2007, talking with those struggling under the daily violence and oppression of Israel's occupation, and recording their stories. The project was political, a sort of ad hoc social history of agrarian resistance. Rizk narrates his wish to 'Capture the stories of villagers because these examples of 'steadfastness... are the most rarely told.' This film begins to fix that problem.
'Steadfastness,' a survival strategy oriented towards communal self-preservation in the face of ideologically-motivated territorial expansion. It is a sensible strategy of resistance when one's opponent is intent on ethnic cleansing to create a homogenous, territorially contiguous homeland, and when that opponent is steadily isolating the native fauna -- in this case, farmers, shepherds and villagers -- in quarantine clusters.
But the type of villagers Rizk has recorded are the ones capable of creating a more mediatic spectacle, the kind that could capture the sort of attention that could change the symbolic structure of the conflict, and restructure it in a way that empowers Palestinian resistance.
Sociologists have little idea what catalyzes a transition from steadfatness to more open confrontation like that in Bilin, Nilin, or Budrus, but it's worth wondering. It's unfortunate that Rizk didn't ask the villagers what they thought of the more active struggles.
Simply telling the stories of Israeli home destruction in the hills, or explaining how Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem can build as they wish while the native Palestinians need permits to build higher than 60 centimeters corrodes the occupation narrative.
http://english.wafa.ps/?action=detail&id=13998