Asurot (Detained)

A fascinating documentary. Variety

Najwa, Nawal and Siham, three Palestinian widows, live with their 11 children in a house on Shuhada Street in Hebron. Their house lies on the border; the façade is under Israeli occupation, the Palestinian authority controls the back. At the entrance to the house a military post, on the roof the Israeli army has placed a watch point over Palestinian Hebron. Three women, trapped in the middle, constantly surrounded by Israeli soldiers, carry on their difficult lives in a perverse situation: the occupation becomes a routine, the absurd becomes a given. This is the story of an occupation that extends to the staircase and the roof of the house, where it encounters poverty, loneliness, pain, but also the small joys of everyday life. This is an internal prison, the external one is the ongoing occupation.

As Israeli women directors, fed up with the cumulative effects if oppression in the occupied territories, we wished to present the arbitrariness of the occupation as seen via the barred windows of an occupied house, to show the thin line between a smile and a gun shot. The intimacy and affection that developed between us and Najwa, Nawal and Siham during the course of our year of filming enabled us to present them in their full humanity, as real women, far from the stereotypical image of Palestinian women held by our society. (Anat Even & Ada Ushpiz) 

Anat Even & Ada Ushpiz, Israel 2001, documentary, Betacam SP, 73 min., Hebr./Arab. Engl. subtitles

Subjects: Women, Hebron, Israel, Palestine, Occupation, Violence, Children, Soldiers

available on DVD