Crusheen-based couple show the fruits of their labour from the Golan Heights

EMOTIONALLY charged images of a woman in deep pain being denied permission to attend her own father’s funeral and Syrian protestors coming under fire from Israeli troops all form part of Keith Walsh and Jill Beardsworth’s new documentary Apples of the Golan.

The couple have lived in Crusheen for the last five years and this is their second feature-length documentary. It will be screened for the first time at the Dublin Film Festival this weekend.
The film is the result of years of work and several trips to the Golan Heights.
“From the first bit of paperwork to the completion was about five and a half years. We first went there in September 2007, we went there in September ’08 and ’09 as well and three times in 2010 and once last year. We spent about seven or eight months there over the years,” says Keith.
It focuses on the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, which is populated by Syrian Arabs, but which has been controlled by Israel for decades.
“It’s actually the highest village in what is controlled by Israel. It’s in the far north-eastern corner of Israel, about 1,600 metres above sea level, right on the border. Israel occupied three territories, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights after the Six Day War. The Golan Heights is kind of the forgotten occupation because there isn’t violent resistance there and there aren’t people throwing stones. There’s no clash with the army so it’s not so visual and it doesn’t end up on the news, or in our consciousness, I suppose,” says Keith.
Israel and Syria are still technically at war and so residents of Majdal Shams can’t visit their loved ones living on the other side of the border, even though there the distance separating them is small.
When Israel initially occupied the Golan Heights there were 139 Syrian Arab villages there, but the number is down to just five, with all the others having been destroyed, their people forced to flee to Syria.
Majdal Shams survived in part because of the apples referred to in the film’s title.
“One of the reasons the village remained is because of the apples; the people were apple farmers and the apples were rooted into the land and the other people were herders, so it was easy to push them and they were able to take their crop. There were other reasons, strategic and military reasons, but the apples were one of them. We used the apples as a metaphor, it’s a connection between the people,” says Keith.
Jill says the film tries to tell a story through a few individuals. “There’s four or five main characters in the film and they tell the story of the occupation, the resistance and their lives there.”
Identity is an important theme, according to Keith, while some of the people featured have been separated from their families for many years. “It’s about identity and how identity is clung to and also destroyed by occupation and them being cut off from their homeland. They’ve got families on the other side of the border and they can’t cross. They can’t go for a visit; nothing crosses the border between Israel and Syria because they’re still officially at war. You have these people who still regard themselves as Arab Syrians and they have nothing to do with Israel. Israel tried to make them citizens and subsume them into Israel but they refused. The only people who cross are students going to study in Damascus. Brides are also allowed cross, you can marry across the border but once you cross you can never go back. Apples cross as well, that’s the only economic trade between the two countries.”
Jill found the different generations in the village had different views on the situation. “The older people would be more bitter, they have more of a connection to Syria, they would have remembered Syria and would know it, whereas the younger people wouldn’t. They wouldn’t really know Syria so they’re in a no-man’s land really, they’re neither Israeli or Syrian, so their identity is mixed up.”
Keith also found that the younger generation were in quite an uncomfortable situation, without access to Syria and without the prospect of acceptance in Israel. “They’re not Israeli or Syrian, they’re completely lost. They’re not really wanted. They can’t go to their homeland and they’re not wanted in the rest of Israel because they’re Arabs and they’re treated like second class citizens. They’re completely lost, they can’t go anywhere so they drive around the village the whole time.”
Because the border is so impermeable people have been separated from their loved ones for decades. While they can marry across the border, the couple must then choose one side to live on – returning isn’t an option. The film features a wedding after which the bride has to leave her family behind permanently.
It also features a place called the Shouting Hill, where people gather to look at their relatives across the border and have a very limited form of communication. “It’s a valley where the border crosses and at things like weddings and funerals, because they can’t come together, they go to the hill and they shout across to each other on megaphones or speakers,” says Keith.
On a superficial level, the occupation of the area by the Israelis may seem similar to the Palestinian experience, but Keith says it is quite different. “You can only compare it with the Palestinian situation in that there is an occupation and Israel is involved in it. But in terms of how it manifests, you can’t really compare it.”
Jill concurs. “In those areas (the West Bank and Gaza) there’s an easier conflict to see but in the Golan it’s not like that, it’s more of a stealth occupation and the Israeli army don’t really bother the population directly on the streets.”
She feels there is happiness in the village, but also a lot of pain. “There’s a contentedness there I think, but there’s also an underlying pain because of the separation from their families. Overall I think they’re happy and I think that’s because they’re working on the land, they’re trimming their trees or watering them and there’s a happiness from doing that but there is sadness in the background.”
The couple found the Syrian Arabs very hospitable, but there were a few problems with filming. “In terms of the work it was very challenging. While they’re quite a friendly people, they have a message and they want to get that out. In their regular life they might be one way but when the camera is on they want to get their message across to the world. They want the world to know that they are under occupation and these are their problems. We didn’t want to do a propaganda campaign about their problems, we wanted to see about the reality that was there. It was a real struggle because the same people would come around you shouting about problems. We wanted to look at the quieter people in the background,” says Keith.
He also found that people were reluctant to speak out against the Syrian Government. “It isn’t paradise over there, but people are afraid to talk about it. They’re kind of pragmatic. Occupation isn’t great to them but they think they’d better not say anything against the leadership in Syria ‘because if we go back one day and if we have said anything against them they will kill us or torture us or treat us badly. Here we can say Israel is bad and they won’t kill us. They might cause us problems but not torture us.’ We try to weigh that up in the film.”
Jill said they were conscious of not creating a film that preached to the audience. “The idea is that the audience see it and make up their own minds at the end.”
The first showing will be on this Saturday at Cineworld on Parnell Street in Dublin at 4.15pm and they hope to bring it to a wider audience in the coming months.
“We only finished it two weeks ago and we showed a rough cut to the Dublin Film Festival and they liked it. Now we’ll start the process of sending it off to film festivals and hopefully we’ll get to bring it around the world,” conluded Keith.