Educational Media Reviews Online

The first misconception begins even before the film footage is shown. The introductory words claim the second infitada in 2000 was caused by the “collapse of the Oslo Accords.” Israel offered the Palestinian Arabs 97% of the land they claimed to be fighting for, making Israel the first and only country ever to offer the Palestinian Arabs a homeland. The offer was rejected with no counter-offer from the Palestinians. The resulting so-called infitada was deliberately launched and choreographed by the leadership of the PLO and above all Yasir Arafat. The Palestinian Minister of Communications Imad Faluji later revealed that Arafat had been planning the newest uprising for months. Over a thousand Israeli citizens were killed.

The film shows the ridiculousness of the situation at the checkpoints (harassment of Palestinians, mostly seemingly innocent), over and over. The young soldiers are generally indifferent or needlessly unpleasant; the civilians testy. The guards were some times apologetic, often wishing the Palestinians a “good day.” Shot over a three year period (from 2001-2003) at checkpoints throughout the region, Checkpoint contains no narration, or even titles apart from the indication of locales.

What we see on screen raises the question of whether the checkpoints are effective deterrents to terrorist attacks, or whether they are a systematic attempt to denigrate and humiliate the predominantly poor Palestinians, for whom the checkpoints are a part of everyday life. If two years of footage doesn’t include a single attacker, then maybe the checkpoints are expensive, useless, and counterproductive. Then again, if the film deliberately omits such footage, then its own integrity is called into question.

What is left out is cynical use of the movement of innocent Palestinians, including people in need of urgent medical treatment and Palestinian day laborers crossing to work in Israel is used as a convenient cover for perpetrating terrorist acts. On the day this review was written two Islamic Jihad members who planned to blow themselves up in a twin suicide bombing in Jerusalem were arrested at West Bank checkpoints. The Palestinian Authority was even informed of the planned suicide bombing by Israeli intelligence but they refused to arrest them and even asked them to be taken from the wanted list. Suicide belts have been found in Palestinian ambulances, just like the ones shown in this film. The checkpoints are there to prevent the murders of Israelis, often innocent civilians.

It also completely ignores how the average Israeli is “humiliated and harassed’ by being searched far more times than the average Palestinian. In the film a Palestinian driver is almost made to take a long detour because down the road “his people are causing problems,” the nearest mention of any reason for the checkpoints. In the end, the soldiers relented and let him go. Israelis traveling north from Jerusalem to the Beit She'an Valley, or south from Jerusalem to Beersheba, have been forced to make a 60 to 90 minute detour to avoid traveling across the West Bank and the Jordan Valley, where drive-by shootings by Palestinian snipers and other attacks on civilian traffic threaten their lives. In Israel, every Israeli is searched numerous times during the course of a day. In most cases, they are subjected to body searches with a metal detector every time they enter a bank or a post office, pick up a bottle of milk at the supermarket, enter a mall or train station, or visit a hospital or medical clinic. Young Israeli men and women are physically frisked in search of suicide belts before they enter crowded nightclubs. As a matter of routine, Israelis' car trunks are searched every time they enter a well-trafficked parking lot. Daily their cars pass through roadblocks that cause massive traffic jams when security forces are in hot pursuit of suicide bombers believed to have entered Israel.

This film had apparently been praised more because it confirms the stereotypes of cruelty of Israelis than because it is a good film. For individuals who know nothing of the history or situation of the Middle East it just reinforces the “poor oppressed Palestinian” image as underdogs in this war against terrorism. Why does the film not focus on how successful the checkpoints are instead of being a biased propaganda tool? Not recommended.

Awards:

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• Joris Ivens Award, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, The Netherlands November, 2003 •
• Best International Documentary Feature, Hot Docs, Canadian International Documentary Festival, Toronto, Canada, April 2004 •
• The Golden Gate Award, San Francisco International Film Festival, USA, April 2004 •
• Special Documentary, DOKFEST, Munich Documentary Festival, Germany, May 2004 •
• Best Documentary, Newport International Film Festival, USA, June 2004 •
• Best Documentary, Calgary International Film Festival, Canada, September 2004 •
• Best Documentary, Docupolis Festival, Barcelona, Spain, October 2004

See another EMRO review of Checkpoint.