No Other Land Review: Heartbreak and Hope From the West Bank

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has raged for decades, but the new documentary film “No Other Land” captures a powerful glimpse into one aspect of this complex dispute. The film follows the residents of Masafer Yatta, a grouping of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank that have endured threats of home demolition and displacement at the hands of the Israeli government.

We witness the villages’ decades-long legal fight and their attempts to rebuild razed homes under the cover of night. At the heart of this struggle lies Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist and journalist who teams up with Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham. Together with two other directors, this Palestinian-Israeli creative collective set out to document the injustices faced by the people of Masafer Yatta.

Armed with their cameras, they set to capture this brink-of-destruction community’s remarkable resilience. But will their filmmaking efforts bear fruit or will the villagers be expelled from their ancestral land? Through raw, frontline footage, “No Other Land” promises to shine new light on the bitter realities of life under occupation.

A Rural Community Under Siege

Masafer Yatta is a collection of small Palestinian villages in the hills south of Hebron. This rural, cave-dotted landscape is home to Bedouin communities and peasant farmers tending olive groves and flocks of sheep. The people of Masafer Yatta feel deeply connected to their ancestral lands. But for over 20 years, Israel has sought to expel them, claiming the area is needed for military training.

It’s been a long, painful legal fight. Back in the early 1980s, the Israeli Defense Forces declared 30,000 dunams in Masafer Yatta a restricted “Firing Zone.” Palestinian residents like the Adra family fought this in court for decades. Despite an Israeli High Court temporarily halting demolitions in the late 1990s, the villages today face an increasingly dire situation. In 2022, the court dismissed the Palestinian appeals. Bulldozers soon rolled in.

“No Other Land” takes us directly into the path of destruction. We witness the ruthless demolition of homes, roads, and structures like the sole village schoolhouse. “The people built this together despite multiple attempts to stop them,” narrates Basel Adra over footage of the IDF chasing terrified schoolchildren from the building. Soldiers then raze the modest little school to the rubble. That’s the occupation authorities’ answer to any show of Palestinian pride or unity.

The villagers rebuild out of necessity, often under cover of darkness. But the next day or week, Israeli forces return to flatten the site again. It’s a cruel cycle of disruption designed to squeeze the Palestinians out. By depicting these scenes of systematic erasure, “No Other Land” lays bare the grinding pressures of occupation. Yet we also see the community spirit and grit which compels the people of Masafer Yatta to reconstruct their homes and their lives over and over. As one villager states with righteous conviction: “We have no other land.”

Raw Footage, Raw Injustice

“No Other Land” pulls no punches in revealing the heavy-handed tactics used to drive Palestinians from their homes in Masafer Yatta. The film collective captures military raids in visceral, chaotic scenes. Tanks rumble through while soldiers barge into houses, terrorizing families. They even violently chase away Adra and others trying to document the cruelty. It’s shocking footage no major network would air.

Checkpoints, permits, bans on construction effectively turn the occupied into prisoners. The film profiles how occupation strangles daily life itself. We see barriers even to accessing water, like when Israeli authorities cement over a village well. “They are trying to starve us,” explains one Masafer Yatta resident. Through it all, the Palestinians endure harassment and violence, often at the hands of extremist settlers. Yet Palestinian complaints fall on deaf ears. Accountability remains elusive.

At the heart of this struggle lies Basel Adra. A descendant of activists, Adra witnesses his father arrested as a boy simply for being Palestinian. Now a lawyer and journalist, he vows to carry on his family’s fight using the law and lens as his weapons. Adra helps organize protests and disseminate images to make the world care about Masafer Yatta’s slow demise. He teams up with Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham who joins Adra in acting as guardian witnesses.

Together with their Palestinian-Israeli collective, Abraham and Adra capture footage and push to get Masafer Yatta’s story told. It’s dangerous work. At one point, a soldier threatens Adra: “Who do you think you’re filming?” But Abraham’s privilege as an Israeli helps grant the team access. “You want to end the occupation in ten days?” Adra chides during a weary moment. Still, the joint effort leads to some media coverage. And the documentary itself will now relay these injustices worldwide. Yet with demolitions ongoing, the impact remains uncertain.

Through it all, the residents of Masafer Yatta model incredible dignity and resilience. Facing such oppression, they somehow find the will to dance their traditional debke even amidst the rubble. As Adra declares, “We have to raise our voices, not be silent as if no human beings live here.” This film gives power and visibility to those voices.

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Bearing Witness: Raw and Unfiltered

“No Other Land” utilizes a cinema vérité approach to bare troubling truths. Instead of slick packaging, the film opts for raw, intimate glimpses into the realities for those living the oppression day-to-day. Handheld camerawork conjures an on-the-ground feel as we trail the villagers confronting demolition crews. And the directors challenge authorities right back, refusing to stop filming even when chased or assaulted.

The collective incorporates personal and archival footage to flesh out context. Home videos show a young Basel Adra happily celebrating Eid. Public news clips then expose the sharp contrast between the freedoms of Israeli children versus Palestinians his same age. Such montages elucidate how injustice was woven into the fabric of Adra’s life from the start.

Yet the documentary finds its most piercing power in scenes filmed as they happen. We witness Palestinian crowds chanting defiantly in the face of armed forces aiming to quash their spirits along with their homes. Few fictional movies capture the pathos of these images. While no violence is gratuitously depicted, the documentary refuses to censor ugly realities. There will be no looking away.

So when a Palestinian named Harun is shot and paralyzed for minor resistance, the collective records his grieving mother close-up, dignified in her pain. In the hands of propagandists, such footage might be manipulated to dehumanize. Instead, the filmmakers present these subjects as fully realized people owed basic human rights and compassion. What the Israeli authorities want hidden from sight, this courageous documentary collective brings into the spotlight. No Other Land opts for truth told tenderly over any agenda beyond the ethical: freedom, justice and the preservation of life over land.

No Justice, No Peace

As “No Other Land” draws to a close, the fate of Masafer Yatta still hangs in the balance. Demolitions continue even as some villagers flee, while many remain, steadfastly proclaiming “we have no other land.” In the film’s last moments, the narration informs us that a year has passed since filming wrapped. Israel has now begun its brutal bombardment of Gaza.

This final coda underscores the wider injustices occurring alongside Masafer Yatta’s struggles. Home demolitions and forced evictions of Palestinians have surged nationally in recent times. Similarly, the military occupation ongoing in the West Bank for over 50 years continues squeezing communities like this one out of existence. But as awareness grows of these human rights violations thanks to films like this, so too does global solidarity and pressure on Israel from allies like the United States.

At its core, “No Other Land” tells a story of the raw imbalance of power between occupier and occupied. Armed Israeli soldiers can chase away and detain Palestinian civilians like Basel Adra simply for documenting realities. Meanwhile, Israeli settler extremists perpetrate violence against Palestinians with seeming impunity. This harsh discrepancy lies starkly exposed when a Palestinian standing up to harassment, like young Harun Abu Aram, can be gunned down and paralyzed without accountability. Where is justice under such oppression?

Yet as Adra declares, “we have to raise our voices, not be silent.” Films like “No Other Land” ensure the resilient voices of the Palestinians ring out loudly across the information battleground. This documentary will undoubtedly impact global discourse by putting names and faces onto the statistics of human suffering. Whether world leaders can translate any sympathy it elicits into actual policy changes remains uncertain. But by courageously bearing witness, Adra, Abraham and their crew have lit a bold torch against the darkness of injustice. May it catch fire in consciences worldwide.

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