Thousands of impoverished Palestinian laborers leave the West Bank territory to find work at construction sites in ever-growing Israel, a scenario that uncannily recalls that of poor Mexican workers who illegally cross into the United States. With bedrolls and rucksacks on their backs and none of the documentation required to get through border checkpoints, these Palestinian men climb walls, sneak through forests and dodge indifferent streams of traffic coursing down a four-lane highway, all while keeping a sharp eye out for the border police and soldiers who regularly patrol the border areas. Eventually, the Palestinians reach their destination: a cluster of tiny hovels, sheds and makeshift lean-tos — a few even equipped with batteries and electric lights — hidden on the rocky hillside surrounding a sprawling, eerily empty concrete construction site. For the next several weeks, this modern-day Hooverville will be their home as they work as cut-rate day laborers for Israeli contractors.
Israeli filmmaker Ido Haar's remarkable documentary follows the lives of two of these Palestinian workers: Ahmad, an incorrigible collector of junk — much of it tossed out by wealthy Israelis — which he plans to use back home, and Muhammad, a quiet, thoughtful young man with sharp, self-critical opinions about the Palestinian predicament. Granted unprecedented access into their lives, Haar follows Ahmad and Muhammad and the men with whom they now live as they work, eat, talk and run from the police. Some are arrested and returned home, only to come back a few weeks later; others are injured or fall deathly ill. While the "Security Wall" designed to separate the West Bank and Israel is mentioned several times throughout the film — the men realize that once it's completed, they'll be out of work — the issue of Israeli homeland security and illegal border crossings is never directly broached. But in its own quiet way, the film clearly shows the secret, symbiotic relationship Israel shares with its embattled neighbor to the west, an economically depressed land that Israel has come to depend upon to support its rapid growth while perceiving the permeable border that sustains this cheap labor pool as an imminent threat to its very survival. In the end, Haar's powerful and terribly sad film speaks volumes, not just about life in contemporary Israel, but in the U.S. as well. leave a comment --Ken Fox
