Al Jazeera commissioning editor and executive producer Sammy Darbashi talks to Business Doc Europe about The House Prison, a tale of a wall and therefore a tale of separation, for which only three shooting days were authorized by Israeli authorities. The film is selected for the AJB DOC’s competition section.
In 2010 Omar Hajjaleh refused to move from his house beside the village of Al-Walaja in the West Bank after Israeli construction of a separation wall began. He was determined to stay on the Israeli side even though the wall cut across his land, dividing him from both the village and his friends and relatives. The stubborn Omar was then told that he would be further isolated on all sides by a surrounding fence, but after judicial review the courts decided instead that an underground passage would be constructed to allow contact with the outside world, but locked by a gate that could only be opened from the inside. Severe restrictions on movement were subsequently applied to Omar and his family, security cameras were installed and 48 hours notice would have to be given to Israeli security should visitors be invited.
Omar shares his house with a wife (whom we scarcely see as she didn’t want to be involved with the film) and three boys. The eldest, Hakam, is studying at Hebron Polytechnic. The middle boy Anas is bored with the isolation yet feels a close affinity to the land that he traverses on a donkey. Hamoudah (referred to by his father as a “sensitive” boy) has a speech impediment, helps twice a day in putting the sheep out to pasture and is upset as his friends won’t come to stay, as their parents are fearful of his domestic set-up.
Al Jazeera’s Sammy Darbashi had originally hoped that the film would be 60 minutes or feature length, but the restrictions placed on access to Omar’s house and land were such that only a short film was possible.
“We didn’t want to endanger the family by going inside without [Israeli] permission,” he says, and therefore went along with the three day stipulation. Nor did he want to put his crew at risk. “It wasn’t enough [time] because we couldn’t filmthe whole suffering of the family. This type of film usually takes a lot of time… You have to stay with the family for a while, so they can relax, so they can trust you and you can bring out of them the stories that you want. But in this case we couldn’t, so we took whatever we can.”
That said, the film presents, in Omar, an articulate and passionate character who dominates proceedings. He speaks of alleged attempts to oust him from his land over the years, including explosive packages placed next to the house and the diversion of rain water so as to produce landslides to damage the property. He also tells how, in 2015, he suffered multiple organ failure, the result, he believes, of poisoning. He underwent balloon angioplasty treatment within an Israeli hospital and had stents inserted, but maintains that no explanation as to the cause of his system breakdown was ever given, and further says that he currently has only 40% brain function.
“Actually, no, I didn’t expect this,” says Al Jazeera’s Darbashi of Omar’s obvious screen presence. “I’m based in Qatar and I have a production company in Jordan and a crew in Jerusalem. So I didn’t talk to him myself, but the crew inside, the producers inside, talked to him… Everything he said was really good and fit the story, and it helped us a lot because we had only a short time.”
Darbashi explains how, while the production team made every effort to involve Omar’s wife in the film, they didn’t contact the Israeli authorities for comment. “We tried many times before and they never answered. And the film tells a lot of truths. I mean, they can’t deny it. We tried before [with] our films, especially when it comes to…land confiscation,” he says. “Nobody will answer you…so on this film, we just said ‘no’. They can talk about it or give us their opinion if they have anything to answer. But I don’t think they have the answer.”
“The family went through a lot of judicial process and they got nothing so far, not only them, also the people in Jerusalem, in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood,” Darbashi continues, comparing Omar’s situation with the ongoing and bitter dispute over land ownership in the metropolis.
“This neighborhood [Sheikh Jarrah] has been in the news for the past six months, some Israeli settlers trying to get their hands on some Palestinian houses. And they [Palestinians] go to the courts, and the courts normally judge for the Israelis. So people have no faith in the Israeli judicial system anymore,” Darbashi concludes.
