Aqabat-Jaber - Vie de passage
Eyal Sivan
France | 1987 | 81 min
Language : Arabic
Subtitle : English
Built in the early 1950s in the Middle East by the United Nations, Aqabat-Jaber, located only a few kilometres south of Jericho, is one of the many refugee camps destined to shelter the Palestinians driven away from their native villages by the Israeli army. The majority of the 65,000 people living in the camp were inhabitants of the villages of central Palestine that were destroyed in 1948.
Built in the early 1950s in the Middle East by the United Nations, Aqabat-Jaber, located on the Dead Sea in the valley of Jericho, is one of the many refugee camps destined to shelter the Palestinians driven away from their native villages by the Israeli army. The majority of the 65,000 people living in the camp were inhabitants of the villages of central Palestine destroyed in 1948. The 1967 war forced the biggest part of the refugees (some estimate a rate of 95%) across the banks of the river Jordan. Nurtured on the hope of going back one day to the land of their ancestors, the people in Aqabat-Jaber live in a no man’s land that looks like a ghost town. Filmed in 1987, a mere few months before the First Intifada – the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and the Gaza strip – broke out, Aqabat-Jaber - Passing Through is the story of what was supposed to be only a temporary solution for the refugees but became a bitter and hopeless way of life. Through his carefully framed pictures, Eyal Sivan points the attention to a ghost town whose only ties to history are fed on memories and an aching sense of nostalgia.
