By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO-Collaboration with an enemy taints everyone involved. While Yuval Adler’s Bethlehem never ignores that the Shin Bet recruits Palestinian informers to avert terrorist attacks on Israel, it explores the vicious cycle of intimidation, manipulation, and reprisals that perpetuate the animosity between the Israelis and Palestinians on the West Bank as much as they do to end it.
Shin Bet agent Razi (Tsahi Halevy) has cultivated a relationship with Sanfur (Shadi Mai’i) to infiltrate the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades cell that Sanfur’s brother Ibrahim leads. Knowledgeable about Palestinian society and fluent in Arabic, Razi treats Sanfur like a son. He hopes to shield the teenager from being executed by Palestinian militants if they deem him an Israeli mole. Indeed, Razi looks like he could be Sanfur’s father in another lifetime.
What belies Razi’s ostensible benevolence is that Sanfur agreed to serve as an informer to obtain the release of his real father from prison whom the Shin Bet had arrested for precisely this purpose. Is Razi really concerned about Sanfur, or merely intent on locating Ibrahim? Razi attempts to camouflage Sanfur’s involvement in the operation that ultimately tracks down and kills Ibrahim by sending him temporarily to another West Bank city. Since the raid results in Shin Bet casualties, Razi’s superiors accuse him of altering the original plan to protect Sanfur.
Sanfur realizes that being an Israeli informer affords him the opportunity to be a double agent and assist his brother’s clandestine activities. While providing intelligence to Razi, he funnels money from Hamas to Ibrahim. This thickens the web of recriminations.
Although the Palestinian Authority represses or tolerates Al-Aqsa assaults on Israel depending on whether aid from the West is flowing or not into its coffers, it resolutely opposes Hamas establishing a foothold on the West Bank. Indeed, Al-Aqsa and Hamas fight over Ibrahim’s corpse to claim him as a martyr for their cause. Badawi, however, subsequently turns to Sanfur to solicit financial support from Hamas because he despises the PA.
As these centrifugal forces drive Palestinians and to a lesser extent Razi and his commanders apart, innocent civilians sustain most of the collateral damage. Israelis perish in a suicide bombing organized by Ibrahim in Jerusalem. Israeli troops retaliate by smashing a hole in Sanfur’s house and issuing an order to demolish it. To capture Ibrahim, the Shin Bet team ransacks the house where he has taken refuge, and finds itself being pelted by stones from an angry Palestinian mob. Sanfur appeals to Razi to stop the bulldozing in return for resuming his role as an Israeli informant. Badawi, on the other hand, has discerned that Sanfur is helping the Israelis. He offers Sanfur a chance to redeem himself by assassinating Razi. Sanfur is left with no moral options.
His dilemma symbolizes the bleak prospects for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Israelis focus on detecting and thwarting the terrorists who are really sparks flaring up out of the tinder box of Palestinian discontent and polarization. Palestinians perceive only the oppression inflicted on them by the Israeli occupation.
The movie inevitably has elicited controversy. Haaretz columnist Gideo Levy denounced Bethlehem as an “outrageous Israeli propaganda film” which depicted Palestinians as “the bad guys” and which failed to take a political stand. Co-writer Ali Waked, an Israeli Arab, based the screenplay on his experiences of covering West Bank politics for Ynet, an Israeli on-line newspaper. He retorted, “I don’t think it portrays one side or the other as all bad. As a Palestinian, I would not be capable of demonizing my own people. …Our goal was to show the situation, not tell viewers what to think.”
I found the tense but often tender relationship between Razi and Sanfur moving. I was kept in suspense until the end on how it would culminate. Like most movies about the complexities of Israeli-Palestinian politics, the film could have used more dialogue or scenes to clarify the differences among the Palestinian factions, as well as the actual setting of the story during the Second Intifada. Adler devotes far more screen time to the disputes among the Palestinians and far less on the divisions in Israeli society. I was surprised that the movie never introduced the role that Israeli settlers play in heightening the antagonism of the Palestinians. Overall, Bethlehem is a taut thriller that delves deeper than usual for this genre into the human costs of collaboration and coercion.
Bethlehem is playing at the Landmark’s La Jolla Village Cinemas. You might want to see Omar there as well which is a Palestinian film on the same topic.
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Baron is a professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted at lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com