Gates of Palestine

Since the time of build­ing the wall that divides Israel from Palestine (mostly illegal, because built on Palestinian ter­rit­ory) a great deal of Israeli occu­pa­tion strategy seems to be lying in immob­il­iz­ing Palestini­ans in their homes, through­out bar­ri­ers, gates, illegal Jew­ish set­tle­ments in Palestinian ter­rit­ory, and fly­ing check­points. As a res­ult of this very elab­or­ate strategy, life for Palestini­ans has become more and more dif­fi­cult and Palestine itself looks more like a puzzle of ghet­tos than as a regular nation. Byz­antine bur­eau­cracy in releas­ing per­mits, wait­ing for hours at the check­points at impossible hours, being rejec­ted for unknown reas­ons; all this makes it kind of dif­fi­cult for Palestinian residents to go to work in the morn­ing, to cul­tiv­ate lands, to run a busi­ness, to go to meet rel­at­ives, to go to the mosque, to live a nor­mal life. UN and the inter­na­tional human­it­arian asso­ci­ations are mon­it­or­ing the situ­ation, and recent stud­ies state that Palestinian civil rights are viol­ated on a daily basis, com­par­ing actual liv­ing stand­ards in Palestine to the ones of the black people, dur­ing apartheid in South Africa. This reportage, entirely shot in Palestinian territory, shows 2 different gates: the Attil aricultural gate, and the Taibeh gate for palestinian workers.