“One day the old will die and the young will forget,” said Dave Ben Gurion, the founder of Israel, addressing the cabinet in 1948, just after the formation of the country, hinting at what will happen to the Palestinians who were expelled from their lands and became refugees. But memory certainly has won the struggle against forgetfulness as is evident from the present times.
One of the lesser known side stories of the Israeli-Palestine conflict is of Ein El-Helweh, a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon set up by the International Committee of the Red Cross to accommodate those thrown out of their homeland in 1948. The area, now housing more than a lakh refugees and descendants, is as good as a no man’s land.
Mahdi Fleifel, a descendant now based in Denmark, chronicles the struggles and dreams of the people here in his documentary ‘A World Not Ours,’ pieced together from footage that he has been shooting from his childhood days in the camp to the current ones shot during his vacation visits. It was screened at the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK) on Sunday.
Most of his vacation visits are during the World Cup football seasons, when the whole camp comes alive. Talking mostly to his relatives and constantly filming even mundane moments, which make up most of their lives, Fleifel portrays what it means to live constantly longing for home.
The youth are shown getting disillusioned with the idea of revolution, with no avenues to work and earn. “No work, no education, no future, no nothing. Those who blew themselves up probably used Palestine as an excuse to end their lives,” says one of them. Some of the anger is directed at their own leaders too.
In 1997, Fleifel became the first from his family to visit Palestine.
But in the footages he shot there, he talks about the confusion of at last reaching the homeland and feeling like you are in someone else’s land. The refugee camp feels more like home to him. Through his personal story, he adds to the necessary project of keeping memories alive and to prove the Ben Gurions of the world wrong.
