No Other Land
Times of violence test our humanity and empathy. Being human, I think we fail to show all-encompassing empathy in the face of violence because we’re conditioned to believe there is one side that is always definitively right, and one that is always definitively wrong. The closer we are to the violence, the harder it is to display our empathy for any side beyond our own. Basel Adra has every right to lose his faith in future peace as we gradually see the village he and his parents have fought for decades to protect from settlement expansion in the West Bank get taken from him, and yet, he still has some small hope, at one point near the end of “No Other Land,” even though things feel truly hopeless.
Acts of violence do not happen in a vacuum. The barbaric events of October 7, 2023 by Hamas, which killed 1200 people and resulted in 251 hostages being taken, may have been the genesis of the year-long conflict that has followed, resulting in tens of thousands of Palestinians and others in Gaza killed, but the conditions in which Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank live- as illustrated by this harrowing documentary- can be seen by some as the justification for the October 7 attacks. Personally, I fail to see how the murder of innocent men, women and children is justified in any way by people who wage such attacks, regardless of their reasons. When violence breaks out on the scale we’ve seen in Israel and Gaza and the West Bank (and, for the past couple of months, in surrounding countries, as well), we tend to stop listening to people who don’t share our perspective, and start seeing them as an adversary, and in the past year, we’ve seen an escalation in both antisemitism and islamophobia. Even if we don’t take up physical arms against a perceived “enemy,” we take up ideological arms, which can be just as dangerous to our humanity. Even if we’re coming from a place of horror at violence that has occurred, or is occurring, we lose some of ourselves in the process. As is illustrated in this film, a lack of empathy for those of us who may be different than us, but are just trying to live life the best they can, is always the first casualty when we’re conditioned to see people as adversaries to be dominated, rather than people who want the same, basic things out of life we do.
“No Other Land” is the work of four people- Adra, a Palestinian activist whose family has fought the forced expulsion of his family and fellow Palestinians from Masafer Yatta, a region in the West Bank, since he was a child; Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist who befriends Adra as he goes to document Adra’s attempts at resistance; Hamdan Vakkak and Rachel Szor- who had no previous experience in making a documentary, but whom had a head start in making this one because Adra had years of home videos, as well as experience holding his phone up to the injustices he witnessed the IDF and settlers doing in the region. One of the main cruxes of the film is to contrast the freedom with which Abraham lives compared to the oppression Adra feels every day, but the heart, and heartbreak, of the film is the struggle by Adra and other activists and villagers as they are displaced from Masafer Yatta. The film begins in 2019, and we see homes bulldozed, water supplies buried in concrete, and the emotional and physical tolls of these people. They often have to find refuge in nearby caves. Every home they build, is bulldozed because they didn’t receive “official permission” to build it, even if they tried. On the land they have lived on for generations. We see the callous disregard for human suffering of the IDF and some settlers, whom take up arms against Palestinians to assert their “rights” to the land they are forcing Palestinians from. Checkpoints are a cause of tension whenever they’re gone through. Human rights are tenuous for Palestinians, but Israeli settlers are able to take a home- sometimes with the IDF nearby- because they want to. This is a film that is enraging, and painful, to watch, and gives us a clear-eyed perspective on life for two sets of people, both of whom just want to live, but only one of them with the privilege and power to make it happen.
As it sits now, almost 14 months after October 7, after tens of thousands of lives lost, any chance at true peace in the region feels all but non-existent. The US has done nothing to reign in the brutality of Israel’s response (which became a steady stream of aggression, not just in the name of self defense, long ago), and with the re-election of Donald Trump, it feels likely Gaza and the West Bank could be completely folded into Israel proper, leaving no place for Palestinians to call their own in the region. As a white American male living on stolen land from the indigenous tribes who were here first, my life is more comfortable than most, but as I’ve listened to the voices of people who have been impacted by the violence in the region, the way forward we seem to be headed is not the one we should be headed. When violence, whether physical or verbal, is the first response, no one’s security is assured, and our collective humanity suffers, as a result.
