DOCUMENTARY | 1995 | 61 MN | COLOR | 4:3 | OVST | o.v ARABIC | ST ENGLISH
Aqabat-Jaber is one of the sixty Palestinian refugee camps built in the Middle East by the UN at the beginning of the 1950s. It was is the biggest camp in the Middle East situated some 3 kilometers south of Jericho.
Having made "Aqabat Jaber, passing through" just before the Intifada, Eyal Sivan returns to the refugee camp in 1994, the day after the evacuation of the region by the Israeli army. A few kilometres from Jericho and built 50 years ago, Aqabat-Jaber is a refugee camp that is under Palestinian control today. Its 3,000 inhabitants have not however seen their status change. According to the peace treaty, they are still refugees and cannot go back to the villages from which their parents fled. The return home of the refugees, right at the heart of the Israelo-Palestine conflict, will determine the future of the Middle East.
AQABAT-JABER, PEACE WITH NO RETURN? by Eyal Sivan
Aqabat-Jaber is one of the sixty Palestinian refugee camps built in the Middle East by the UN at the beginning of the 1950s. It was is the biggest camp in the Middle East situated some 3 kilometers south of Jericho.
The majority of its 65,000 inhabitants came from those villages in central Palestine that were destroyed in 1948. The 1967 war pushed 95% of that population across the banks of the river Jordan. The traces of war and the effects of erosion by the desert accentuate the contrasts between the abandoned refugees and the huts that they still occupy, and make Aqabat-Jaber look like a ghost town.
Aqabat Jaber films by Eyal Sivan tell the story of all refugees, deported population, displaced persons, that are at the center of the great conflicts of the 20th Century. It points to a critical question of peace processes in Israel-Palestine. Can peace between Israel and Palestine be possible without the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland which has now become Israel?
Key words: Palestinian refugees, Palestine, Occupation, Right of return, Nakba, 1948, Refugee camps, Israel-Palestine conflict, Peace processEducation interests: Colonialism, Film and Media, Geography, History, International Law, Israeli Studies, Middle East Studies, Palestine Studies, Political Science, Visual Anthropology