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Watch a documentary clip from ‘West of the Jordan River,’ directed by Amos Gitai. Photo: Kino Lorber
There’s a weariness to “West of the Jordan River,” both in the storytelling and the face of
Amos Gitai.
And why not? The director has spent the better part of four decades chronicling the history of his native Israel and its conflicts with the Palestinians, and he has to look back 24 years—to
Yitzhak Rabin
in 1994—to find something to hang his hopes on.
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Not that he doesn’t try. Although perhaps best known for his often exhilarating fiction films (“Kadosh,” “Kippur,” “Kedma”), Mr. Gitai has a considerable body of documentary work and in “West of the Jordan River” returns to the occupied territories for the first time since his 1982 “Field Diary.” There, he interviews various people affected by, or trying to counter, the occupation. What he finds, occasionally, is exasperation: “Our government is insane,” says
Yuli Novak,
who at the time of filming led the organization Breaking the Silence, which was founded by Israeli soldiers in response to their experience in Hebron. “Crazy young settlers are running the country.” Mr. Gitai does not disagree. Conversely, his exchange with Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
Tzipi Hotovely
is argumentative and fraught. Ms. Hotovely rejects the basic premise of the film (“we’re not occupying our own land,” she insists) and promotes the hardline
Netanyahu
stance that settlements will continue and that the real problems “go back to 1948 not 1967.” (That Mr. Gitai begins the scene with Ms. Hotovely sitting down at her desk and handing him a hairbrush—a moment that could easily have been cut—seems to be a dig.)
Photo:
Kino Lorber
Elsewhere, the journalist
Ben-Dror Yemini
offers that “You can’t always blame Israel,” and voices objections to organizations trying to ameliorate the crisis, on the grounds that they ultimately undercut the country. But Mr. Gitai isn’t buying it, and Mr. Yemini doesn’t seem quite convinced himself.
“West of the Jordan River” is as formally precise at it is politically unapologetic. Mr. Gitai talks to
Gideon Levy,
who profiles Palestinians for Haaretz, but also to settler women who’ve been attacked by terrorists; one comes to understand their personal plight, though not the biblical argument for their presence on the West Bank. While “West of the Jordan River” uses Mr. Gitai’s 1994 footage of Mr. Rabin to assert that leadership can, perhaps, combine realism and optimism, he also prompts a chilling response from a young Palestinian in Hebron. Asked about his fondest wish for the future, the boy answers, without pause, “To die a martyr.”
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