The New York Times · 8 May 1994

CP-1994-062

In Gaza, a ‘Shoot’ Is Not Just Film Slang

By JOEL GREENBERG

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Transcribed from the clipping

GAZA Cradling plastic replicas of rifles and dressed in mock Israeli Army fatigues, helmets and bullet-proof vests, a group of Arab actors stood in an orange grove last month and pointed their fake guns at a Palestinian boy. As one actor playing a jittery soldier went through the motions of shooting, a burst of genuine gunfire rattled in the distance.

Real Israeli soldiers were patroling nearby roads, checking cars for fugitive Palestinian militants. The scene in the orchard was from a Palestinian movie described by its makers as the first feature film made entirely in the Gaza Strip, other than documentaries.

It has been shot here over the last two months in circumstances that often blur the line between staged drama and reality. The production may be the last under such conditions. The Israeli Army has begun withdrawing under an agreement on Palestinian self-rule.

“Tale of the Three Lost Jewels” is set against the background of the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories. A mixture of realism and allegory, it traces the odyssey of a Palestinian boy who tries to win a beautiful girl by finding lost jewels from her grandmother's necklace.

The imagery is left unexplained, but the three gems may symbolize a Palestinian's roots; the people are divided into those in Israel, those in the occupied territories and those in the Diaspora. The jewels are thought to be lost in South America, where many Palestinians immigrated after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

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