veiled4allah: latest on Palestinian non-violence movement

One of my occasional features here is highlighting various Palestinians who are advocating for and pursuing non-violence. The latest is film-maker Hanna Elias:

Controversial Palestinian director Hanna Elias, who made a movie with an Israeli crew, wants to promote nonviolence as a means to ending settlements and prove the two sides can live together in peace. "It's the only film on which I worked with an Israeli crew," he said. "I wanted to make that move as a Palestinian, to show we can work together, open borders and all be one country."

"The Olive Harvest," filmed in the Ramallah and Jenin regions of the West Bank, is a complex Palestinian love story and one of 13 movies that made their Gulf premiere during the six-day Dubai International Film Festival, which closed on Saturday.

Elias, who said he was ambushed in Dubai by Arab reporters who criticized him for working with an Israeli crew, argues that his film is strictly a love story and portrays the experience of women.

"There are complex universal issues in the film, but people don't concentrate on that. Because I had an Israeli crew, it created a hoopla."

When screened Friday before a full house, however, the public reacted positively during a subsequent question-and-answer session.

"There was no aggressiveness, even though they were aware I'd worked with Israelis ... and when I said I would do it again, that I would work with Israelis and build bridges, there was wide applause," he said.

The film's two leading male characters, brothers Mazen and Taher, who fight over the same woman, Raeda, represent Israelis and Palestinians fighting over the same land.

"We salute the makers of 'The Olive Harvest,' who have shown that two peoples can work together and produce excellent cinema," the festival organizers said.

"That is why I agreed to come here," said Elias, pointing to the festival guide write-up. "When I read the statement, that means they salute the Palestinian cast and Israeli crew. That means this is a place I must come to honor." ...

...Elias says he wants to establish a "nonviolent movement in Palestine." As a start, he is dubbing Richard Attenborough's "Gandhi" into Arabic and plans to release it in February.

"We will open in Ramallah and try it in different (refugee) camps as a pilot. All the people working on the dubbing are Palestinians from Ramallah.

"I'm doing this as a way to get the settlers and Israeli Army out of the West Bank. Engaging my people with that I think will bring a change from within," Elias, who grew up in Galilee, said optimistically.

"The biggest hurdle in the peace process is the settlements. ... That's what will kill us if it isn't solved." Elias is involved in a $7 million enterprise of building a Palestinian-Israeli film school in Jerusalem in collaboration with Israeli-American producer Natan Zahavi and another three founders.

The school, to be opened in 2007, will accommodate 20 Palestinian students, 20 Israelis and 10 foreigners, all of who will live together.

"I want to focus on the young generation," he said, "they're not poisoned like us."

Other posts in this series include Could a Palestinian non-violence movement work?, Follow-up on Palestinian non-violence movement, Leading Palestinians call for non-violence, and Another post on Palestinian non-violence movement.

I've also written entries about the larger context of Islamic non-violence movements, not limited to the Palestinians. My reason for particularly focusing on Palestinians is the idea common in certain right-wing circles that "all" Palestinians support terrorism and want to "drive Israel into the sea". This simply is not true.