Movie “The Cup Final”
I watched a movie today called “The Cup Final”. It takes place in 1982 in Lebanon during the Israeli invasion and follows the story of an Israeli soldier “Cohen” who is taken prisoner by a band of Palestinian freedom fighters who attempt to bring him to Beirut in order to ransom him. During the journey through Lebanon, the prisoner (Cohen) and the captors find common ground and actually become friends. The point of the movie of course is that “despite our differences we are all the same at the human level”. It’s meant to be an encouraging story that reminds us that if Palestinians and Israelis could just get to know eachother, then the problem would be solved.
These stories always tend to make me more depressed than hopeful. For one, the conflict goes far beyond simply hating the other because of religious or cultural differences. The conflict is based on the fact that back in 1948 and 1967, Palestinians were forced off of their ancestral homeland and have been oppressed and occupied ever since. No matter how many Israelis and Palestinians realize that on a person to person level the other isn’t that bad, it won’t change the fact that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will never be able to return to their homes. The damage has been done.
The other reason that movies like this do not give me hope is because while individuals may become friends, the machinery in its entirety is pusing to seperate the two sides. As I write this, an 18 foot tall concrete wall is being erected for the purpose of seperating these two groups of people for good. The “peace process” is much better described as a “divorce agreement”. As unattainable as a viable two-state solution seems, it is still the only solution that is being talked about these days with any amount of credibility.