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Checkpoint
- The Palestinians After Oslo
Tom Wright
and Therese Saliba
The celebrated
signing of the Oslo Peace Agreement in 1993,
symbolized by the handshake between Yitzhak
Rabin and Yasser Arafat, signaled to people
throughout the world a long-awaited resolution
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Recent
events, however, have cast a shadow over
the original optimism for regional peace
and revealed the fundamental shortcomings
of the agreement.
Tom Wright
and Therese Saliba lived in the West Bank
from 1995 to 1996 and chronicled these events
as they unfolded. Checkpoint, their new
video-documentary, portrays a side of the
story little known to American audiences:
the devastating effects of the agreement
on Palestinian lives. With an engaging style
and offbeat humor, the documentary exposes
shallow mass-media interpretations of the
conflict and reveals the immense imbalance
of power between the two sides.
Palestinian
and Israeli human rights activists, as well
as political figures like Hanan Ashrawi,
give their views of the major events of
the period: Rabin’s assassination,
the Palestinian Authority takeover of West
Bank towns, the first Palestinian elections,
the suicide bus bombings, Arafat’s
abuse of power, Netanyahu’s election,
and the September 1996 uprising.
Checkpoint
takes its title from the innumerable Israeli
roadblocks, which ironically have become
a permanent feature in the new era of Palestinian
"autonomy." In the post-Oslo era,
the checkpoint becomes the symbol of Israeli
control and domination. In the face of these
obstacles, Israelis and Palestinians seek
to grapple with these grave injustices and
to set forth an alternative vision for a
just peace.
Reviews
"CHECKPOINT
provides an important look at the daily
realities of Palestinian life... obscured
by the very misleading notion that there
is a 'peace process' going on."
Joel Beinin, Standford University
Editor, Middle East Report
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