[Warning: Contains spoilers]

Salt of this Sea is a story about young people trying to shake off the restraints that control them - of military occupation, of borders, of a corrupt government and of a social system that rejects them. Is it the story of a new generation wanting to live and knowing that sometimes, in order to do this, one has to take things in their own hands.

I am interested in the fact that Soraya, Emad and Marwan are in a way already considered “criminals” by the Israeli system, without having committed any crime. The film opens with Soraya at Ben Gurion airport. When her “Palestinian-ness” is discovered, she is treated in a different way than the others passing through the airport. For many Palestinians, it is at borders and checkpoints where we realize we are in a different position than others, and where we become “Palestinian”. For Soraya, Emad, and Marwan, as young Palestinians, their desire for freedom, to explore the world around them, makes them suspect. For a Palestinian so much is illegal: to build a home, to travel to another town, to return from exile, to study abroad, or to even go to the sea – for most Palestinians, these are impossibilities, both practically and also legally.

After the protagonists of the film do actually commit a crime, that is, the robbing of the bank, they then become ‘criminals’ in a more traditional sense. But in this case, they empower themselves: they choose to become criminals. However, now they are criminals inside the West Bank, the place they robbed the bank, but not within Israel, where their actions at the bank are not known. From the moment of the robbery on, when they decide to take things into their own hands, everything changes in their lives. There is no returning. I am interested in exploring how this plays out within this atmosphere of occupation and with characters who in many ways have been formed by a history of dispossession that has been passed down to them through several generations.

Soraya’s ultimate search is for dignity and for recognition. On the surface, this comes through in her desire to recover her family's money from the bank. But what she has been fighting against all her life is that she has always been denied something and fighting against a system that continues to deny her. Her connection to Emad is one that stems from this common experience. Though they have grown up in very different worlds, both are marginalized people –as young people and as refugees. They are also marginalized because of their class. Not only have they been shaped by exile and dispossession due to the Israeli occupation, but now they must also contend with a Palestinian leadership that has let them down and ignored their dreams and desires.

Soraya finds a Palestine that has let her down - that of an elite that has little concern with the society around them, and of a government totally out of touch with its people. The struggle for freedom that she has grown up believing in does not materialize in the Palestine that she discovers. For Emad, his dreams of escape and of a normal life slip further and further away from him. All around Ramallah, the Apartheid Wall encroaches and the checkpoints become more permanent. He has applied for permits to leave Ramallah numerous times only to be rejected every time. His last hope is to apply to study abroad and receive a scholarship at this point; this is the only way for him to finally get out of this life.

After the bank robbery, when the trio goes into hiding in Israel, I see their lives as if they have entered into another dimension. In some ways, as Palestinians, they are totally invisible to everyone around them, as if they are not there. At the same time, this very same identity makes them very visible and noticed in mainstream Israeli society (like when Emad has his ID checked), because they are perceived as a threat.

The key to their survival inside historic Palestine is their ability to “pass” or to not appear to be “Palestinian.” Soraya obviously has an easier time doing this as she has two advantages; an American accent and an American passport. She is able to get through checkpoints more easily and to float through and converse with Israelis who have no idea she is an Arab. For Emad and Marwan, it is much more difficult. As young Palestinian males, they are prime targets. Additionally, they have West Bank ID cards, don’t really speak Hebrew, and do not have permits to leave Ramallah. Soraya also becomes “illegal”, because as a foreigner with a limited visa, she has extended her stay past her time.

When they leave Ramallah, Emad and Soraya see their lost country for the fist time, as if f they are tourists (and in fact Soraya will never be allowed to be anything more than a tourist by the current system). They have never been able to see this world. They see a world they both know deeply from the moment of their births but have never see in actuality. Many Palestinians who are able to, go to see their former homes -- it’s not unusual at all and Israelis are quite used to it- most Israelis know exactly where they are living. When she eventually finds her family’s old home, she sees a place that is somehow recognizable and yet totally different than anything she could ever imagine. They ‘see’ and read this new world differently than the average person who lives in Israel, and differently than the average tourists (because they are far from tourists). They are able to visualize a history -- their history -- everywhere and they see Palestine in everything, even though this Palestine is no more. It is as if they are seeing a fourth dimension. In every stone, every house, and everything that makes up the landscape – they see the skeleton of a lost world.

The sea is also part of this lost world. Emad has not seen it in 17 years. The simple act of going to the sea, despite living in a Mediterranean society has now become an impossible dream, though he only lives 30 minutes away. The sea represents his isolation and separation not only from other people, but also from a normality that is now unattainable: this simple activity of swimming in the sea, which has grown to represent an impossible fantasy.

For Soraya, it is that same sea, in all its beauty, which is also the enemy. It is the sea that took her family away, along with thousands of others, decades ago. The sea that was their source of life. Her grandfather’s story of the diminishing shore of Jaffa being the last thing he saw of Palestine has become her story. It has also become the focus of her anger, and her frustration – it is the sea that took everything away from her. She wants to force the sea to reconcile and accept her return.

For the refugees dispossessed in 1948, the sea was the last thing they saw of Palestine. There's an essay written by Shafiq Al-Hout, a Palestinian exiled from Jaffa, where he speaks about this moment in 1948… They were on the boats and he was looking at Jaffa and the boat was moving further away, Jaffa shrinking before his eyes and he never realized that would be the last time he’d see his home… This is the first shot of the film.

The different worlds are brought back together when Soraya is in the Haifa mini-market near the end. She sees images on TV of Nablus in the West Bank, where the Israeli Army has entered. This is the world which they have left behind and have not had contact with since they entered Israel. The worlds are re-connected and visually we are reminded of the scene which opens the film, tanks and destruction, when her grandparent’s world is destroyed leading to their exile. 1948, 1976, 2001, today… Past and present become one – without separation.

Exile. The last shots of the film. In some ways, a tribute to the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: Athens airport disperses us to other airports… Yet, like the benches in the terminal, we remain, impatiently waiting for the sea. How many more years longer, O Athens airport?

Palestinians have a special relationship to airports. They represent our exile, our constant traveling, and also our connection to the world. Airports for me have marked my life, have become a kind of home, and at the same time a constant reminder of not having a home. Airports have been embracing, familiar, and comfortable. Airports have also been a place of constant goodbyes, final moments, and transitory-ness –the place to pick up the suitcase we are always sitting on top of and dragging around. For me, the concluding sequence in the airports contextualizes what being Palestinian has become for millions of dispersed Palestinians, of different classes and histories – an entry into a transnational, dislocated and fundamentally dehumanizing space.

Spaces and locations…

"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."- Moshe Dayan, in Haifa, quoted by Ha'aretz, April, 4 1969.


Of the more than 530 Palestinian villages which were depopulated and demolished, I managed to locate and visit about fifty of them, spending countless months relying only on bits of clues from the original inhabitants, pre-48 maps, and pieces of information from people I encountered in gas stations, selling coffee on the side of the road, living in a nearby kibbutz….

Emad’s village, Dawayima

On October 29th, 1948, Dawayima was the site of one of the little-known but well-documented massacres of the war. Between 150 and 300 people, including women and children, were killed. Some took refuge in the village mosque, and when the troops entered the village, they massacred the entire crowd.

"Ben-Gurion, quoting General Avner, briefly referred in his war diary to the 'rumours' that the army had 'slaughtered 70-80 persons.' What happened was described a few days later by an Israeli soldier-witness to a Mapam member, who transmitted the information to Eliezer Pra'i, the editor of the party daily Al Hamishmar and a member of the party's Central Committee. The party member, S. Kaplan, described the witness as 'one of our people, an intellectual, 100 percent reliable.' The village, wrote Kaplan, had been held by Arab 'irregulars' and was captured by the 89th Battalion (8th Brigade), composed of former Irgun and Lehi troops, without a fight. 'The first [wave] of conquerors killed about 80 to 100 [male] Arabs, women, and children. The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead,' wrote Kaplan. Kaplan's informant, who arrived immediately afterwards in the second wave, reported that Arab men and women who remained were then closed off in their houses 'without food or water.' Sappers arrived to blow up the houses. 'One commander ordered a sapper to put two old women in a certain house ... and to blow up the house with them. The sapper refused ... The commander then ordered his men to put in the old women and the evil deed was done. One soldier boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot her. One woman, with a newborn baby in her arms, was employed to clean the courtyard where the soldiers ate. She worked a day or two. In the end they shot her and her baby.' The soldier-witness, according to Kaplan, said that 'cultured officers ... had turned into base murderers and this not in the heat of battle ... but out of a system of expulsion and destruction. The less Arabs remained--the better. This principle is the political motor for the expulsions and the atrocities.'"*

The American consul in Jerusalem, William Burdett, who had received news about the massacre reported on November 16 to Washington "Investigation by UN indicates massacre occurred but observers are unable to determine number of persons involved."

Aharon Zisling, the minister of agriculture, told the Israeli cabinet on 17 November 1948: "I couldn't sleep all night. I felt that things that were going on were hurting my soul, the soul of my family and all of us here (...) Now Jews too have behaved like Nazis and my entire being has been shaken."

Today, the Jewish town of Amatzya is located on lands belonging to the former town.


Jaffa, Bride of the Sea…

Before 1948, Jaffa was the Palestinian cultural and commercial center, boasting 14 newspapers, 19 schools, 5 hospitals, 70 printing presses, as well as theatres, poetry clubs and a 17 cinemas,
screening Egyptian and foreign films, and a highly successful citrus industry, exporting to the world.

In 1948, the mass majority of Jaffa's population were ethnically cleansed - out of the 70,000 Palestinians who used to call Jaffa home, only 3,650 were allowed to stay. Most of Jaffa's inhabitants were forced to leave via the sea. In boats, many of the refugees landed in Gaza, Egypt, and some made it all the way to Beirut. Some fled inland to al-Ramla, al-Lyd, and the well off refugees fled to Jerusalem and Amman.

The remaining Palestinian population were boxed in al-Ajami neighborhood, where their movements were severely restricted until 1966.

The flat, open area Soraya and Emad walk….the empty spaces where homes once stood, is the Jabaliya neighborhood of Jaffa. Between 1975 and 1985, 2,515 housing units in Jaffa were demolished regardless of their physical condition. Now nothing remains but a junk yard, filled with the remains of the demolished neighborhood.

Amidar (Israel’s National Housing Corporation) and Halamish (Government-Municipal Company for Housing Renewal) performed a systematic demolition of houses in Jaffa as a whole and in the neighborhoods of Al Ajami and Jabaliya in particular, as the result of municipal policy towards Arab neighborhoods, in an attempt to prepare the ground for a redevelopment plan that will absorb a Jewish population instead of the existing Arab population. When walking in this area, pieces of homes, wires, furniture, and lost belongings are found amongst the dust, crumbling into the sea.

REFERENCES:

*Morris, Benny (2003). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

*Benvenisti, Meron (2002). Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948. Univ. of California Press

*Flapan, Simha (1987). The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: Pantheon

*Gilmour, David (1980). Dispossessed: The Ordeal of the Palestinians 1917-1980. London, UK: Sidgwick & Jackson.