Educational Media Reviews Online

Bethlehem Diary is the fourth film about Palestinians by Antonia Caccia. The previous three are On Our Land (1981), about discrimination against Palestinians in Umm el-Fahm in Israel; Voices from Gaza (1989), interviews with Palestinians after the start of the first intifada, and Stories of Honor and Shame (1996), Palestine women in Gaza. All are distributed by First Run/Icarus Films (http://www.frif.com). This film was shown at both the 2002 New York and London Human Rights Watch Film Festivals.

The film titles begin with the first verse of “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem;” the opening shots are of crosses on steeples, chanting and the bells of churches emphasizing the Christian Palestinian presence in the West Bank. The film then cuts to an interview with an Israeli human rights lawyer in Tel Aviv, a friend of Caccia, the director and producer. The lawyer, who has helped Caccia with past films, will set up contacts for her in Bethlehem, specifically with the family of Rifat. We are then taken to Jerusalem to meet a family with whom Caccia has worked before. The husband, Marwan, is a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, has a doctorate in peace studies, is married to a British wife, and has three children. He came to Jerusalem five years ago to head up a peace education program for Israelis and Palestinians.

The narrative then takes us into Bethlehem, past streets lighted with fires, to closed hotels and shots of street conflict. The documentary was filmed initially in December 2000, when tourists had been forbidden to enter the town because of the second or Al Aqsa intifada, demarked by Ariel Sharon’s September 28 visit to the Temple Mount. Bethlehem is closed to traffic, the streets have been intentionally filled with rumble by the Israeli army, and checkpoints multiply and move from street to street.

Because all the hotels are closed, Caccia stays with the friend of the human rights lawyer, Rifat, who is the executive director of the East Jerusalem YMCA. The YMCA is one of the largest humanitarian NGOs in Palestine. Rifat had met the Tamar, the human rights lawyer, while he was in prison in 1989 and 1990, held for a year as an administrative detainee. He was never charged, and was eventually released. Rifat now lives within six miles from work in Jerusalem. Sometimes he can get to work, and sometimes he cannot, turned back at the checkpoints. His wife, fortunate to be granted an exit visa, is preparing to visit their daughter in school in Holland. She is unhappy with her life in Bethlehem, and would leave if she could.

The film is marked by images of the calculated unprofessional capriciousness of checkpoints and its central function as the axis of control. People are turned back, people get through. Men in suits scale the street rubble attempting to get to work.

I want to live. … All my life is like crossing the checkpoint and leaving the checkpoint, and having a permit and not having a permit. … Colleague of Marwan

You don’t have any rights. … To move is not your right. You need a permit. To go for medical treatment, this is not your right. You need a permit. To go to school. This is also not your right. To go to work. This is not your right. Rifat

The checkpoints tell the Palestinians, “This is not your city; not your country.” … “You don’t have any rights.” As Rifat observes, “Everything here under the occupation is designed to make your life miserable.” The pervasiveness of the occupation is overwhelming. The Israeli settlement of Har Gilo on top of nearby hills looms over Bethlehem. Although unoccupied at the time of the film, it is being built to house 40,000 settlers. The population of the city of Bethlehem is roughly 27,000. Frustration, anger or resignation is captured in almost every interview.

There are interesting interviews with shopkeepers, who leave home at the traditional hour for work to play cards with each other at the Paradise Hotel. There are no tourists, so there is no work for the shopkeepers. The card game has become their work, or at least it gets them out of the house. Another vignette shows doctors, apparently all women, trying to go to El-Khadar, a town south of Bethlehem. They fear the settlers, are held up at the checkpoints, and providing services to the outlying towns less and less often.

The narrative then skips six months, to the middle of 2001. Rifat fails to get to work. Houses are shelled by the Israeli army. The quality of life has degenerated. Marwan has succeeded in being hired by an international program for conflict resolution in London. He is preparing to leave. He has a farewell party with his family in Umm el-Fahm. He knows that he has options other Palestinians do not have. In the final scene he sits in front of a window in his now empty house, weeping, as he prepares to leave, with the sound of sirens coming from the streets.

Interestingly, television and computer screens represent some aspect of freedom, windows out to a larger world. The two families and the human rights worker are upper middle class, and all speak English. They have computers, they have contacts outside of the West Bank or Jerusalem, and they have options. They regularly send email, communicating without having to go through the checkpoints.

Religion is another window to freedom. One half of the Palestinians living in the area of Bethlehem are Christian, as are the two families in the film. There are several scenes where families are singing hymns.

From everywhere it’s coming. On horses of dread, it’s coming. Rage is coming, and I am full of faith. Rage is coming, I’ll overcome sorrow.

This film has many such small, telling moments, for example, domestic scenes in the kitchen, but the film seems to miss as many opportunities. In the opening of the film, Caccia says, “I decided to go to Bethlehem with a small video,” almost as though she were a casual tourist or traveler. The purposes of the film are never made apparent. It is scarcely fair to criticize a documentary for what it does not do, but many of the themes could have been developed further. For example, how do the Christians interact with Muslim Palestinians? What is the historical context for Israeli containment? An area in Bethlehem is referred to as an “A” area, but the historical basis for Palestinian control is not explained. The film’s focus on the two families is both its strength and its weakness. The families are not representative of other Palestinians, as they admit, but the differences are not explored. Although the cinematic quality of the film is high, the story line meanders and seems driven by events and opportunity, but not by a plan.

This film is biased, and does not strive for objectivity. There are no interviews with Israelis, and we see them only as captors. The only mention of the Palestinian suicide bombers is from a CNN report, not from any of the interviews. The contextual imagery is manipulative and propagandistic. Although the precarious state of the Palestinians in Bethlehem is affectingly portrayed, the narrative offers no solutions but the progressive loss of possibility or emigration. This film is recommended, as a one-sided, provocative description of Christian Palestinian life in Bethlehem.