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Director's Statement
My films have the tendency to get complicated and even when my intention is to make a very simple film many times things get tricky. THE FIRST 54 YEARS - AN ABBREVIATED MANUAL FOR MILITARY OCCUPATION was supposed to be a very simple film: a collection of testimonies of soldiers from 54 years of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The testimonies are derived from the archive of "Breaking the Silence" - an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers who took upon themselves the goal to expose the inner workings of the machine of occupation to the Israeli public.
Originally the film was called THE FIRST 54 YEARS and only at a later stage the ABBREVIATED MANUAL FOR MILITARY OCCUPATION was added.
At first I was convinced that to index the testimonies within a certain logic that would create internal connections between them would be enough to tell the story of the occupation which is probably the longest in modern history. I thought that a compilation of one testimony and yet another one and another and so forth would autonomously create the meaning of what is occupation, what it means to be an occupier, what it involves to sustain an occupation and under what kind of system those living under occupation find themselves, i.e. the Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
It was clear to me from the very first moment that I was going to concentrate only on actions, deeds, commands and mechanisms as the soldiers describe them and not on their reflections concerning the things they did. I wanted to expose to the viewer what an occupation means, how it works, what needs to be done for the occupation to sustain itself.
But as the editing of the film progressed, it became clear to me that I had to develop some kind of framework that would contain the deeper meaning for this huge enterprise, the largest that the State of Israel has created in its 73 years of existence. After all, I do not assume that the purpose Israel is maintaining this occupation is solely to cause suffering to the Palestinians. It was clear to me that in order for my project to be complete I had to connect the very strong body of testimonies with some logic that would allow a deeper understanding of the reasons why this occupation lasts for so many years and why it is also unlikely to end and disintegrate in the foreseeable future.
The vast majority of the testimonies deal with local events which in themselves do not reveal the general incentive that led to their formation. The single incident of imposing a curfew, erecting a checkpoint, detaining someone or restricting movement does not usually indicate the general end for which it serves.
Thus was born the ABBREVIATED MANUAL FOR MILITARY OCCUPATION - a kind of handbook of instructions for operating a military occupation of a territory that deals not only with the "how to" but also with the aim of these provisions. What general purpose does this or that mechanism serve, what is the incentive of the occupier when imposing a certain system of laws and rules on the inhabitants of the occupied territory?
It was clear to me that none of the persons who were part of the system that created and set the rules of the occupation would agree to collaborate with this project and honestly reveal the logic behind the huge machine of the occupation. Therefore I had no choice but to volunteer and take upon myself the role of representing this enormous system known as the Israeli occupation.