Script Home
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We love animals, we like to take care of them.
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Do not treat the donkeys badly.
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They notice it when they are treated well
and they will take care of you too.
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I'm very persistent.
I was born like that.
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I want to become a famous journalist.
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Not only in local media,
I also want to go abroad.
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For TV stations like Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabia.
I'd like to show everyone I can make it as a journalist.
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It is our destiny to work with donkeys.
Ever since I was born I have worked with donkeys.
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We have worked with donkeys for generations.
I took this business over from my father and grandfathers.
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I transport goods and stuff in Silwan,
for all the people in the neighborhood.
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What else can I do?
There are no other job opportunities.
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We just dream, that's all we do.
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The people here depress me.
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They always tell me, Muna, there is no work here.
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You will never become a journalist.
You will become a teacher at best.
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But since I'm ambitious and persistent, I keep
dreaming of a career as a well-known journalist.
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TITEL: Home
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I feel strongly related to my neighborhood.
I love it.
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PLAATS: Sheikh Jarrah
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I was born here.
This is where my neighbors and friends live.
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SVO: Muna AlKurd - 18 years old
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That's why I'm defending my house so much.
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PANCARTE:
Muna lives in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in East
Jerusalem.
In 2009, half of her house was taken over by Israeli
settlers
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This is the house where we now live.
It is my grandmother's house.
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This is still ours, they didn’t take it.
And there is the part the settlers took.
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In 2009 the settlers took
everything from here up until the street.
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We built this part because our family
got bigger and we needed more rooms.
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We applied for a building permit
but they didn’t give us one.
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So my dad built it anyway
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but after we had finished it,
an Israeli court closed the house.
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They took the keys and that's it.
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The house remained closed for 10 years.
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DISCLAIMER:
Archive footage filmed by Muna and her brother
Provided by B'Tselem
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In 2009 the settlers came.
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They had been trying
to lay their hands on the house for a long time.
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In 2009 the court decided
to give the key to the settlers.
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The problem is we
can't understand their logic...
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Ok, it was built without a building permit.
We agree on that point.
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But it doesn't make sense that the house
is illegal for us but not for the settlers.
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We cannot live in it but the settlers can.
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It was so hard for me to go through this as a
young girl who is not aware of what is going on.
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When I saw my house was taken,
it was so heartbreaking. Really...
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That's it. They took it.
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PLAATS: Silwan
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Silwan has a lot of small streets, full of stairs.
Cars cannot reach it.
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Only donkeys can go around
and deliver the stuff to people's houses.
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I go wherever I can work.
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Some people can afford
to pay me something but others cannot.
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People have a hard time here.
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I'm proud of doing this job and I love it.
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It's kind of helping people and at the same time I earn
money to support my children.
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It's better than begging , isn't it.
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Silwan is a nice neighborhood.
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What I love most is when we all gather at night.
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We crack jokes and have fun together.
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It makes me forget all my problems.
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The bad thing here is the occupation.
It's suffocating.
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Even at home you are afraid.
They may come and take your house.
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SVO: Nayef Abassi
28 years old
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It happens a lot.
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PANCARTE:
In 1967 Israel occupied East Jerusalem.
Israeli policies in East Jerusalem violate international law
and human rights law in a number of ways.
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Unfortunately in june 2017.
We are closing 50 years of occupation.
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The lack of land
and the lack of housing
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SVO:
Nisreen Alyan
Attorney for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel
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became the biggest problem of Jerusalem.
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Confiscated almost one third of the land of Jerusalem,
building settlements on it and giving almost no permits to
Palestinians for building on their own land
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That brought people to build houses
without permits
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Pancarte:In 2016 the Israeli authorities
demolished 190 Palestinian homes
and other constructions in East Jerusalem.
A record since UNOCHA started recording demolitions in 2009
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The numbers are only increasing
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You'll have to pay from the moment you build a house without
permit
until they destroy
it, which is a lot of money.
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Tha means the municipality is getting a lot of money
from the policy of not giving permits to the Palestinians in
East Jerusalem.
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It all comes down to one policy that is very very clear:
getting Palestinians out of East Jerusalem.
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This is the house where we live.
There are nine of us.
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There are only two bedrooms.
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As you can see, this is the main room.
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My grandmother and my aunt
sleep together in one room there.
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My grandmother and my aunt
sleep together in one room there.
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My brother is in the 10th grade now.
He is 16 years old.
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My sister Maha sleeps with me in the living room.
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I call it my room
but actually I don’t have a room.
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You can see it's actually a living room
with the sofas and all.
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I sleep here. This is my bed.
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I study on this bed, I do everything on this bed
because there is no other place to sit.
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My little brothers can be very noisy
when they are playing and fighting.
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I put up all these photos...
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This is my twin brother and me.
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This way it feels more like my room,
a private place to stay.
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I don't have any privacy as a girl here.
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I can't even change my clothes freely or rest in my room.
The door is always open
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I had built a barn for the donkeys.
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It used to be here
but the municipality ordered me to take it down.
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I told them that this is just a barn for the donkeys
and two sheep. Nothing more.
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They said: "We don’t care.
If it is still here next week, we will demolish it."
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Next Saturday they knocked at my door at 8 o'clock in the
morning.
I was still sleeping.
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The police grabbed me and brought me here.
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They pushed me around and asked me:
"Will you demolish it or shall we do it?"
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A policeman was shouting and pushing me.
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When I pushed him back,
he hit me with his gun.
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Then I fell down here.
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My children were up there.
They started crying.
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Look at my teeth.
They broke my teeth.
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I'm 28 years old, married and I have two children.
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I'm ashamed to look like this
in front of my children.
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I built this barn on my own land.
Why does it bother them?
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Hurry, hurry. I want a hug!
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A kiss, I want a kiss!
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One more.
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The strategy in Jerusalem from the planning authorities
is to divide it as much as possible
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To make sure that there is a clear cut line
between the Arabs and Jews in the city.
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And this means that the city cannot function
like any normal city would.
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Be it business wise or everyday life.
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PANCARTE: Omar Abdelqader studies art and design
at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem.
He is 25 years old.
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So yes of course I feel that in the academy too.
The view from the cafetaria of this academy specifically is
Issawiya.
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Issawiya is an Arab village that is very much under
priviliged
and very much segregated from its area.
00:13:30,212 --> 00:13:36,012
Where people don't get permits to build, the population
cannot develop properly, where people don't get proper education.
00:13:36,012 --> 00:13:44,800
And when that's my view when I'm getting my coffee, as a
priviliged Arab student in the B'tselem Academy of Arts and Design, yeah I feel
the racism.
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The neighborhood is very crowded.
We have no parks inside the neighborhood.
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We have no empty places or room to build
new buildings for a new generation
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SVO: Hanni Issawi
Director of the local committee to protect Issawiya
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So it is very difficult to keep living
a normal and good life in this neighborhood.
00:14:12,274 --> 00:14:17,940
We are surrounded from all the sides.
We are like an island in this area.
00:14:17,940 --> 00:14:27,364
PANCARTE: Issawiya is one of many overcrowded
neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.
Residents are contesting the government's plans to build
a national park on the empty land surrounding Issawiya,
fighting for their only remaining chance to develop the
neighborhood.
00:14:27,562 --> 00:14:38,158
So behind us you can see the area that is intended to be a
national park.
This is the land that is between Issawiya and At-Tur. At-Tur
to the South, Issawiya to the North.
00:14:33,562 --> 00:14:37,811
SVO: Sari Kronisch
Bimkom - Israeli planners and architects
for democracy and human rights
00:14:39,466 --> 00:14:48,384
The idea of these national parks is to prevent the growth
and the possibility improvement of the Palestinian
neighborhoods next to them.
00:14:49,594 --> 00:14:58,661
Both Issawiya and At-Tur are neighborhoods that have
basically detoriarated to become slums because of lack of any city investment.
00:14:58,661 --> 00:15:07,032
But there is also a shortage of just about everything
from infrastructure to class rooms to the opportunity to
build, to building permits.
00:15:07,162 --> 00:15:12,152
There is the fear of demolition orders.
The neighborhoods are both very over crowded
00:15:12,152 --> 00:15:19,682
And in order to provide for the needs already today and for
future growth,
more land is needed.
00:15:37,913 --> 00:15:40,323
It's almost a cliché now,
saying that Jerusalem is dead.
00:15:40,703 --> 00:15:46,454
The thing about the occupation is that it self destructs.
So it kills itself basically.
00:15:46,454 --> 00:15:49,704
Jerusalem is an occupied city so it's dying.
It's dying from the inside.
00:15:54,703 --> 00:15:57,223
In order to change the situation
a number of things need to happen.
00:15:57,223 --> 00:16:03,522
But from a planning perspective,
plans need to include the needs of the residents and the
neighborhood.
00:16:03,522 --> 00:16:10,777
An this can only happen if they are included
and really seen as
players and partners.
00:16:10,777 --> 00:16:23,301
Issawiya and At-Tur are examples
but in East Jerusalem there are a little bit more than 20
previous villages that all suffer from more or less the same problems
00:16:23,301 --> 00:16:29,402
It's very difficult to receive building permits, the
demolition occur in various neighborhoods.
00:16:30,902 --> 00:16:39,732
What happens is that people end up building without permits,
building what is considered to be in Israel illegaly but
this is the only option really that they have.
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And they end up facing demolition orders
and living with the fear of actual demolition.
00:16:50,040 --> 00:16:52,640
I'm in my first year at university
where I study media.
00:16:52,960 --> 00:16:59,280
I wake up three hours before my class starts
just to arrive on time.
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Because there is chaos
and checkpoints on the road.
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I decided to study media
because I love to work with cameras.
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I like to film.
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Journalism is such a powerful thing.
00:17:12,680 --> 00:17:17,640
That's how my voice
and the voice of my people can reach the world.
00:17:19,320 --> 00:17:24,360
I've been playing with cameras
together with my twin brother since I was a child.
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When they took our house in Sheikh Jarrah
and the neighborhood fell into chaos,
00:17:31,800 --> 00:17:34,880
we filmed it
to document what was happening.
00:17:35,040 --> 00:17:36,480
We recorded videos every single day.
00:17:35,331 --> 00:17:52,831
DISCLAIMER: Archive footage filmed by Muna and her brother.
Provided by B'tselem.
00:17:36,760 --> 00:17:40,520
We filmed the support we got from foreign activists
as well as cases of forced eviction in the neighborhood.
00:17:40,680 --> 00:17:43,720
We filmed our house
and how the settlers attacked us.
00:17:49,920 --> 00:17:57,480
I hope that with this work I can show everyone
the suffering of the Palestinians and the Jerusalemites.
00:18:14,800 --> 00:18:19,040
Have at look at this beautiful scenery.
I come here every morning.
00:18:19,560 --> 00:18:22,920
I drink my morning coffee here
and I smoke a cigarette.
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I like to watch it, it's a nice view.
00:18:28,240 --> 00:18:30,080
It is calm.
00:18:32,360 --> 00:18:35,640
A week ago, I woke up
to the noise of big trucks.
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I thought they were working at my house.
I was afraid it would be demolished.
00:18:44,240 --> 00:18:47,800
Wouldn't you feel scared about
your house if you saw something like that?
00:18:48,320 --> 00:18:51,680
Look at him, the poor guy.
It must have broken his heart.
00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:54,200
He may have lost all his money on it.
00:18:55,120 --> 00:19:00,640
God knows how hard he worked
to save money for this house.
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PANCARTE: Nayef's house wasn't built with a full permit.
He has already received a fine for it.
There is an ongoing legal case
about the building permit of his house.
00:19:26,600 --> 00:19:30,760
Look at us.
One room, a kitchen, a toilet and a living room.
00:19:30,920 --> 00:19:35,760
Where can I go
if the Israeli government comes to destroy it?
00:19:35,920 --> 00:19:42,840
I don't want much.
I just want a shelter for me and my family.
00:19:50,074 --> 00:19:51,074
00:19:50,074 --> 00:19:56,582
PANCARTE: Every week Muna follows
a video workshop in Bethlehem.
She wants to use her video reporting skills
to tell the story of her house and her family.
00:20:00,280 --> 00:20:06,520
When there are lines
that are not straight in the background,
00:20:06,760 --> 00:20:09,720
the tripod may not be properly balanced.
00:20:10,640 --> 00:20:16,240
I follow this course for two reasons.
00:20:16,800 --> 00:20:21,600
Firstly, it matches
my journalism studies at university.
00:20:21,760 --> 00:20:27,320
Secondly, it allows me to talk about
forced displacements and tell the story of my house.
00:20:27,760 --> 00:20:35,600
In this course we discuss the forced displacements
that are happening in Jerusalem
00:20:35,840 --> 00:20:39,680
and how we can show them
to the world by film making.
00:20:40,040 --> 00:20:42,600
In Sheikh Jarrah you can find
a lot of stories, for sure.
00:20:42,760 --> 00:20:45,400
Indeed, we will tell
the story of my house.
00:20:45,560 --> 00:20:49,680
I thought about the main storylines.
We will talk to my grandmother about 1948.
00:20:49,720 --> 00:20:53,520
Maha will talk about the current situation.
And we will talk with an expert.
00:20:53,680 --> 00:20:57,480
As I told you,
we didn’t plan exactly what we would film.
00:21:09,600 --> 00:21:14,520
Inshallah, my children's future
will be better than ours.
00:21:14,920 --> 00:21:19,160
We work hard
and we do everything we can for our children.
00:21:19,880 --> 00:21:24,880
But reality is quite different.
It says we will stay the way we are.
00:21:25,680 --> 00:21:26,760
That’s what reality tells us.
00:21:26,880 --> 00:21:29,040
My children's future will be similar to mine..
00:21:29,640 --> 00:21:33,880
Our parents lived under occupation
and we live under occupation.
00:21:34,080 --> 00:21:37,040
But we will continue to walk this road.
00:21:41,062 --> 00:21:49,062
I don't think I'll stay in Jerusalem.
My plan for now is to go to Jaffa because that is where i
can integrate the best
00:21:49,062 --> 00:21:55,582
and that's the place i feel I can relate to most at this
specific time.
Who knows...
00:21:59,432 --> 00:22:04,433
Somtimes we take to much pride
in being able to withstand pain and suffering.
00:22:05,934 --> 00:22:12,832
So yeah maybe in that sense I feel like it's a little bit
running away from Jerusalem but I'm a human being.
00:22:12,832 --> 00:22:21,351
I do want to have a good time
and I do want to fulfill my potential in whatever I stride
to do
00:22:21,351 --> 00:22:24,412
As of right now I see myself doing that in Jaffa.
Maybe one day I'll come back to Jerusalem.
00:22:27,412 --> 00:22:32,912
Maybe my persistence is the result
of what has happened to me.
00:22:32,912 --> 00:22:36,914
Because of my house. Because of what is going
on in Sheikh Jarrah and Jerusalem in general.
00:22:37,743 --> 00:22:41,720
It has given me strength.
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:51,800
We are under occupation and we have
to put up with the settlers and the Israeli army.
00:22:54,200 --> 00:22:57,000
But we are strong in the end.
We will survive.
00:23:02,454 --> 00:23:24,239
Credits:
A film by Berber Verpoest (director)
Camera - Filip Huygens
Montage - Frederik Jassogne
Research – Hans Bontinck
This film was developed in cooperation with Danish Church
Aid and Palvision.
However, its content does not represent the official
position of these organisations
This documentary film was produced with the financial
assistance of the European Union.
The contents of the film are the sole responsibility of the
beneficiaries
and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.