Troubled waters. A rather whimsical title for the content it heads up. Almost romantic. Mills and Boon. Gentle and evasive. The title for an Israeli documentary about two of eighteen Jewish families who live on Palestinian land in Gaza around 2000, and who fish from the same beach as Palestinians.
These Israeli settlers are not fanatics, one father is a professed left-winger, but nevertheless the parents possess this gentle and evasive self-centredness. A quiet will to dominate. If the fact of illegal settlement is completely overlooked it is so easy to blame the Arabs. Superficially there is this hail fellow well met friendship with the Palestinian fisherman. They sit on the beach and eat together. But it is all completely phoney.
The larger political scene brings into being the second Intifada. Immediately one father demands of the military that they destroy Palestinian crops. Those bastards want to harm innocent children. If they take something of ours, we will take something of theirs. If they harm us we will harm them 10 times over.
Meanwhile aerial bombardment of Gaza is compared to Palestinian gunfire. When they shoot at night and the kids are terrified we don't feel safe. Meanwhile there is devastation in Gaza following helicopter assault. With satisfied looks they watch TV showing terrified Palestinian children and learning that there is one dead and over fifty wounded. Let them fear a bit.
Then one of the women phones a Palestinian fisherman. Why? Is it some undetected need to fraternise? Is it a hidden wish to hear that the other suffers? The Palestinian gives nothing away. The woman then applies guilt. You have turned us into paupers, we have no money. Things could be better you know.
That war criminal Sharon comes into office and these few settlers are given increased security, funding and flasher homes with swimming pools. Still they complain while Palestinian agriculture remains erased from the land. Having just made them comfortable Sharon then decides to embark upon his scheme to lock up Gaza and focus on the West Bank. The settlers have to leave. They wallow in increased self-pity.
An unmarried man lives with one of the families. He us quite glad to be moving into Israel. Why? Apparently more chance to get married. Picking grapes with one of the children he asks: You know whose vines these are? Arabs who used to live here. Their homes were demolished. They had the cream of the land out here. Now it's ours. Is he teaching the child to pity or to gloat? The ambiguity encompasses both possibilities at the same time, resulting in moral stultification.
But a ray of hope. One of the daughters tells her father that she has no problem with the Arabs. When she was younger she saw more of them than Grandma. Left-wing father says to her: This is Israel. She replies: No it is not. He responds: This is Greater Israel. May that young woman retain her genuine integrity and not be smothered by national conditioning.
At the very end as they leave one of the women declare: All of this goes to the Arabs. As if it was not theirs before and should not be theirs in the future.
