No other land is entirely filmed in Masafer Yatta, a sort of township located in the Hebron district, in the West Bank, which has around twenty villages, spread over approximately 3,000 square kilometers where 2,500 Palestinians live, mostly farmers or sheep herders. . The others are artisans, traders, teachers, doctors. There are women with no other profession than taking care of children and their men, as in the past. There is also a gas station attendant, it is the father of Basel Adra who, with Hamdan Ballal, has been filming everything that happens at Masafer Yatta for ten years.
They have become the journalists of their village. I don’t know exactly how old Basel and Hamdan are, but they’re not much older than 25. They sent their articles and images on the Internet for a long time, until one fine day, in 2019, two Israelis, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, also journalists, discovered these articles and images and decided to go to Masafer Yatta to meet Basel and Hamdan and see for themselves what is happening. This is courageous, although for Israelis it is easier, because they have a car with a yellow license plate which allows them to move freely everywhere, while Palestinians have green plates, which prohibits them to get out of the West Bank. Green, yellow… I don’t find this choice of colors in very good taste on the part of the authorities; in Neuengamme [NDLR : camp de concentration en Allemagne]my grandfather wore an inverted red triangle with the letter F in black.
Rachel and Yuval arrive by car at Masafer Yatta. The meeting is not easy with Basel and Hamdan. It is precisely in its difficulty that their courage lies. I write courage in the plural, because none of these forms of courage are like the others. They form the basis of this sensational and heartbreaking film, which was filmed over nearly ten years. We never see Rachel or Hamdan who remain behind the camera, watching the friendship build between Basel, the Palestinian, and Yuval, the Israeli, around this common project: to defend these threatened villages through words and images, made of tracery of troglodyte constructions from three or four thousand years before Jesus Christ, and houses made of concrete blocks, corrugated iron sheets, Placoplatre, not jojos, but with running water, electricity, sewerage, and roads that connect them, schools where the children go, shops, a gas pump. It’s especially the schools that hurt when the bulldozers come to demolish them like houses of cards. Even I who hated school so much, it hurts.
Have the courage to watch this film
Most of the residents of Masafer Yatta are descended from families of Palestinian Bedouins who settled there in the early 19th century. So of course, the mothers scream and cry, clinging to the Israeli soldiers to prevent them from doing this: “This is our home, what will become of us, where will we go?” The soldiers, calm, so calm in their Kevlar uniforms, their helmets, their sniper rifles slung over their shoulders, guide the bulldozers. A gesture from the officer towards this house, and the house is immediately twisted, crumpled like a page of history.
In defiance of all UN resolutions and all international organizations that have tried for seventy-six years to establish rules and establish peace in the region, the Israeli government has decreed that Masafer Yatta must serve as a camp training for the army. Not even a concealed pretext for the establishment of new colonies. Besides, they are already there, the settlers, immediately after the bulldozers have demolished everything, they come to test the ground that will belong to them and, on occasion, this too is filmed by our four courageous settlers. shoot at a Palestinian who was trying to repel them with his bare hands, he will remain paralyzed for life. Then they shoot another Palestinian, equally unarmed, whom they kill. Have, in turn, the courage to watch this film. No other act.
Christophe Donner, writer
.