Documentaries and features on conflicts over land and water, and on efforts to promote peace and understanding.
Stories from the Middle East
ProjectsDates
1997-1999
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Sandy Tolan
Worlds of Difference
The Imaginary Village
Sandy Tolan
Worlds of Difference
The Imaginary Village
In 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee their homes to make way for the new state of Israel. More than 50 years later, the villages of Palestine remain intact in the imaginations of refugees and their descendants.
I’ve been traveling to the Holy Land for about ten years now, and early on in my journeys I came across something deeper, quieter, and more melancholy than the noise and blood and rage of endlessly recurring headlines. I could see it in the faces of aging women in exile, transfixed before the television screen on Christmas Day, gazing at the Church of the Nativity, just at the end of Star Street, where they were born. I could hear it in the voices of grandfathers remembering a family lemon tree, or the silk and indigo of the Wednesday market, or the truckloads of zetuns bound for the olive press at harvest time.
This was longing: an attachment to land and village going back to 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians fled or were driven out of their homes in the new state of Israel.
In my trips to the West Bank, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon, I would come to understand that this sense of longing could not be disconnected from the current violence, or from the “peace process” that never leads to peace.
Indeed, the longing for 1948 seems the one main thing unexamined in the countless words of copy and miles of videotape spilled over the Arab-Israeli conflict.
For the elderly refugee living in a camp in southern Lebanon, who can gaze upon the lights of his native land, or for the middle-aged exile in Nebraska whose mother still holds the key to a stone house that no longer exists, the longing forges into political and human aspiration, embodied in a phrase that is never far from Palestinian lips: the right of return. Yet the longing also creates a physical and psychic disembodiment. For many refugees, the memories, even passed onto the third generation removed from the village, seem more vivid and real than the camps where their families have lived for more than 50 years.
“My home,” a young man in a camp near Beirut told me, “is the homeland I have never seen.”
Despite several UN resolutions, and after years of ambiguous language, the United States has now endorsed Israel’s long-standing position: that a Palestinian return to the 1948 homeland is no longer an option. And indeed, that homeland is, in some ways, imaginary. Yet the aspiration is real, and as deep and abiding as it has ever been.
– Sandy Tolan
Thanks to Jay Allison and our friends at Transom.org. Original music composed and performed by Mohsen Subhi Abdelhamid.
Date
June 5, 2004Other Contributor(s)
Melissa RobbinsOutlets
Transom.org -
Sandy Tolan
World Views
The Lemon Tree
Sandy Tolan
World Views
The Lemon Tree
An audio documentary, weaving the voices of an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man whose families occupied the same house, exploring the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
An audio documentary, told in first-person by an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man whose families occupied the same house, exploring the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This piece, which originally aired on NPR’s Fresh Air, grew into Sandy Tolan’s award-winning 2006 book The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East.
Date
May 1998Outlets
NPR's Fresh Air -
Sandy Tolan
Stories from the Middle East
Troubled Waters | Part V: Negev Ancient Springs
Sandy Tolan
Stories from the Middle East
Troubled Waters | Part V: Negev Ancient Springs
Part 5 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.
Part 5 of a 90-minute, five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.
Date
February 27, 1998Outlets
Living on Earth -
Sandy Tolan
Stories from the Middle East
Troubled Waters | Part IV: Of Jordan: A River and a Nation
Sandy Tolan
Stories from the Middle East
Troubled Waters | Part IV: Of Jordan: A River and a Nation
Part 4 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.
Part 4 of a 90-minute, five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.
Date
October 31, 1997Other Contributor(s)
Sandy TolanOutlets
Living on Earth -
Sandy Tolan
Stories from the Middle East
Troubled Waters | Part III: Collision In Gaza
Sandy Tolan
Stories from the Middle East
Troubled Waters | Part III: Collision In Gaza
Part 2 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.
Part 3 of a 90-minute, five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.
Date
March 6, 1998Outlets
Living on Earth -
Sandy Tolan
Stories from the Middle East
Troubled Waters | Part II: Under the West Bank
Sandy Tolan
Stories from the Middle East
Troubled Waters | Part II: Under the West Bank
Part 3 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.
Part 2 of a 90-minute, five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.
Date
July 18, 1997Outlets
Living on EarthTags
Themes: Peace & Conflict, EnvironmentRegions: Middle EastMedia: AudioOther Contributors: Sandy Tolan -
Sandy Tolan
Stories from the Middle East
Troubled Waters | Part I: The Politics of Mideast Water
Sandy Tolan
Stories from the Middle East
Troubled Waters | Part I: The Politics of Mideast Water
Part 1 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.
Part 1 of a 90-minute, five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.
Date
March 13, 1998Outlets
Living on Earth