Promises

Since ancient times, there is conflict between the Israeli and the Palestinian people in the Middle East in which thousands of people die every year fighting for territory and for their own beliefs. Life is a precious thing even there where death is constant, and the conflict is a problem that needs to be solved so no more lives are lost. One way to solve the issue is by establishing a communication between the divergent ideas, and this is what B.Z. Goldberg, the director of the movie Promises tried to do by putting Israeli and Palestinian kids face to face.

The documentary shows the reality of seven kids that live only twenty minutes from each other in Jerusalem, but even leaving so close they have completely different lives. From those kids, B.Z. Goldberg managed to arrange a meeting with four of them in which they played, talked and were exposed to the other culture. The kids that met were Yarko and Daniel, two Israeli boys that live in West Jerusalem and are secular Jews, and Faraj and Sanabel who live in a refugee camp in the West Bank, both are Palestinian.

There were also some kids that did not got in contact with the other culture and it was clear after all to see the difference that a simple meeting makes in the ideology of a person. Sholomo, a Jewish rabbi, Moishe and Mahmoud, both Palestinians, did not participated in the meeting and all of them stuck to their old positions about the issue, stating that Jerusalem was their land. Those three kids wanted the conflicts to stop, but they did not gave a peaceful way to do so. They just wanted the other people to leave and did not talked about any agreement nor peaceful solution to end conflicts.

Differently from the kids that did not met, Yarko, Faraj, Daniel and Sanabel had opened their minds to a different point of view towards the issue. They were able to see that the same problems that they were facing with war was also part of the lives of the people from the other side as well. They saw that the Palestinian and the Israeli cultures were similar to each other and that in end they played the same games, eat the same food, and lived in the same way. They saw that there was no need for a conflict to happen since that they could come into an agreement and live peacefully accepting the religion and the costumes of the other people.

The point showed by Promises is that communication does influence people relations. Those that talk and open their minds to other points of view and opinions have more intelligence and come with better solution to solve problems, especially the ones between people. Communication was key to change such rooted ideology in the kids from the documentary, and it proved that the issue in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict could be solved in a peaceful and simple way. Instead of wasting time preparing attacks and killing innocent people, both the cultures should come together and listen to each other, just listen and came into an agreement.