The 20 students who attended Tuesday night's screening of excerpts of the unfinished documentary "Encounter Point" got a glimpse into the world of Israeli and Palestinian grassroots peacemakers.
Nahanni Rous, manager of educational outreach for Just Vision, the non-profit behind the work, told the students the film is intended to serve as "a conduit between people on the ground doing work and those who want to support them."
The violent elements of the Israel-Palestine conflict have received extensive press coverage, Rous said. She said she hopes "Encounter Point" will help convince people that Israeli-Palestinian relations are "not just what's going on in the media, but that there's a grassroots peace movement."
The first film excerpt showed a young Palestinian man, Ali, trying to persuade his friends that non-violence is the only way to resolve the conflict over control of the West Bank. When his friend disagreed, Ali cited Gandhi's success and said that violence destroys Palestinians' international support.
"Today you must convince the world that you are not [terrorists]," Ali said in the film.
Other screened scenes told the story of a pair of Israeli and Palestinian fathers, Tzvika and George. Both of their daughters were murdered, the first's by a suicide bomber and the second's by an Israeli soldier.
The Israeli daughter, a 12-year-old, was shot when riding with her father because their car was mistaken for that of a wanted Palestinian. A crowd of Palestinians marched at the daughter's funeral, chanting, "The voice of Christina is saying, 'Don't forget my friends in the name of the Bible and Koran.'"
One year after the deaths, the two fathers joined the Bereaved Families Forum, an organization of 500 Israeli and Palestinian families. Rous said the Forum, which has about equal numbers of Israeli and Palestinian participants, makes presentations on and around the West Bank in order to foster communication and understanding between the two groups.
"If we who have lost what is most precious to us can meet to resolve the conflict, then everyone else can too," the Israeli father said.
To find the stories that filled the screen, Just Vision conducted hundreds of interviews and shot over 200 hours of footage. Interviews that are not in the movie are available on the group's Web site, which categorizes the interviews by their commonalities and provides a timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The organization encourages teachers to use the Web site as a resource.
In the question and answer session that followed the screening, first-year Fletcher School student Matan Chorev (LA '05) asked Rous how non-profits like Just Vision hope to appeal to the moderates in Israeli society.
"The more people that sign on [to the grassroots peace movement], the less fringe it will seem to people," Rous said. Just Vision "exists to bring attention to these other [fringe] groups," she said.
Rous could only show a few excerpts of "Encounter Point," she said, because Just Vision is planning to screen the entire documentary in a few months at a film festival.
The event was hosted by the New Initiative for Middle East Peace (NIMEP), a project of the Institute for Global Leadership that aims to foster productive dialogue about Middle East issues. Chorev helped found the group while he was an undergraduate.
The screening was co-sponsored by the Arab Student Association, Friends of Israel, the Political Science Department, and the International Relations, Middle Eastern Studies, and Peace and Justice Studies programs.
NIMEP Co-Chairman Alex Zerden, a junior, said the documentary was "a very innovative and unique way of exploring conflict resolution" between Israelis and Palestinians.
