Promises Movie Analysis

Eli Baker
Period 7
Mrs.Matthews
Promises Essay The movie “Promises” was about the religious conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. In this movie the talk to kids and follow them around to see what daily life was like for them. They also asked a lot of questions about their opinion on this conflict and in this essay you will learn what they said and what their opinions were. This conflict in this region has grown a lot throughout the years and many people are unhappy. The things that are causing this are borders, government, and religion. Many people don't know how much this is affecting both religions and what they have to do to follow their religion. Also all of these kids have very strong opinions about what they think
about the other religion and aren’t very open to them. Despite a long-term peace process and the general reconciliation of Israel with Egypt and Jordan, Israelis and Palestinians have failed to reach a final peace agreement. The key issues are: mutual recognition, borders, security, water rights, control of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements,Palestinian freedom of movement, and Palestinian right of return. The violence of the conflict, in a region rich in sites of historic, cultural and religious interest worldwide, has been the object of numerous international conferences dealing with historic rights, security issues and human rights, and has been a factor hampering tourism in and general access to areas that are hotly contested. Faraj is a Palestinian refugee and he had a friend that was killed by by and Arab and he has a strong opinion about killing them. But Faraj’s friend also was throwing rocks at them to try and protect him and everyone that he can. One of the main questions first asked about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is “who has the rightful claim to the land”, and in my opinion; Israel has rightful claim to the territory. The pro-Israeli stance that I hold is based on the fact that Israel has maintained military dominance over the disputed territory. I see the conflict as a survival of the fittest, where Israel has proved its supremacy by defeating all attempts of invasion and elimination, such as the Yom Kippur War, Six Day war, and the War of Attrition.
The creation of a Palestinian state has also been a topic of debate.
I would create a Palestinian state for the purpose of defining a location at which a historically hostile force can exist. The creation of the Palestinian state would be a precautionary action against the new Palestinian state, so that if another war was to occur, the Israelis would know where a sizeable amount of attacks would be plausible to originate from. Moishe and his sister Raheli are very passionate about killing the arabs and they think that they should get the land because they have never experienced it before. They seem to think that everything should go their way but that is what every other kid thinks
about. There are two primary issues at the core of this continuing conflict. First, there is the inevitably destabilizing effect of trying to maintain an ethnically preferential state, particularly when it is largely of foreign origin. The original population of what is now Israel was 96 percent Muslim and Christian, yet, these refugees are prohibited from returning to their homes in the self-described Jewish state (and those within Israel are subjected to systematic discrimination). Second, Israel’s continued military occupation and confiscation of privately owned land in the West Bank, and control over Gaza, are extremely oppressive, with Palestinians having minimal control over their lives. Thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children are held in Israeli prisons. Few of them have had a legitimate trial; Physical abuse and torture are frequent. Palestinian borders (even internal ones) are controlled by Israeli forces. Periodically men, women, and children are strip searched; people are beaten; women in labor are prevented from reaching hospitals (at times resulting in death); food and medicine are blocked from entering Gaza, producing an escalating humanitarian crisis. Israeli forces invade almost daily, injuring, kidnapping, and sometimes killing inhabitants. Most of the kids in the movie always worry about if they will be endangered because of all the war that has been happening. When the narrator asked most of the kids about meeting the others they said no because they thought they were terrorists.
In my opinion there needs to be peace in this religion and they need to figure out something to divide up the land.
Even though this needs to happen it probably won't happen for a while because of the amount of terrorists in this region. Also the religion controlling the land probably won't let it go without a fight. I hope that this look at the historical record concerning the root cause of the Middle East conflict will give second thoughts to all who have previously supported Israel's actions. There is a lot of things that need to change before anything is done to this reason. To end most of the kids had valid points that make you think differently about this conflict and I hope my essay does the
same.