TV REVIEWS : ‘Occupied Lands’ Exposes the Two Sides

So deep and longstanding is the animosity between the participants that Arab-Israeli peace talks seems almost an oxymoron. And “Journey to the Occupied Lands”--producer-correspondent Michael Ambrosino’s engrossingly methodical look at the disputed West Bank and Gaza Strip territories whose fate appear central to peace--does nothing to alter that pessimistic impression.

The 90-minute “Frontline” documentary (at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, 8 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24) applies a “Rashomon” tint to this volatile Israeli-Palestinian clash over land, with Ambrosino hearing each side aggressively put forth a differing version of the same reality.

As Ambrosino notes, though, the reality that all agree on is that the Palestinian and Israel dreams are interlocking: “The Palestinians dream of making a state. The Israelis dream of security for the state they’ve made. What little power the Palestinians have to achieve their dream, has been the threat to deny the Israelis theirs.”

Ambrosino omits some historical perspective--failing to note, for example, that in addition to ever-embattled Israel, most Arab states also have been unfriendly to the Palestinians. What he does do, by painstakingly giving each side pretty much equal time, is effectively define the land-related issues dividing them and the threat each believes the other represents.

In the process, he addresses claims that in practically all areas of life--from housing permits to legal justice--Israel’s democracy is two-edged, that it has established one set of standards for Jews, another, much tougher, discriminatory set for the Palestinians whose territories Israel occupies.

Although hardly the first to cite the scope of Israeli expansion in these territories that it acquired in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Ambrosino and producer-director Gillian Barnes use their camera to make the point emphatically, showing that even under an announced “freeze,” Israeli expansion continues.

Ambrosino cites U.S. government estimates that there are “200 (Jewish) settlements and 100,000 settlers” now in the West Bank and Gaza. And he implies that calling these communities “settlements” is a misnomer. As this program affirms, many are well-established, sprawling, red-tiled suburbs offering inhabitants, whether from Tel Aviv or Chicago, such “comforts of home” as supermarkets and other modern facilities.

On one level, this development is undeniably impressive. On another, it symbolizes what zealously dovish Israeli parliament member Dedi Zucker tells Ambrosino is his nation’s determination to “swallow the West Bank and Gaza” as if there were no Arabs living there. Moreover, Palestinian peace negotiators consider these communities illegal.

Just as insistent are the residents of the Karnei Shomron community profiled here, expressing their belief that, as Jews, they have a spiritual and historical as well as legal right to the occupied land, even though many are American born.

Ambrosino wonders aloud what would happen under a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. “Would the settlements be isolated inside a self-governing Palestine? Or would it be the other way around, Palestinians living in an extended Israel?” And what of Jerusalem, the Israeli capital that Palestinians would want as their capital should they achieve their own independent and sovereign state?

As with nearly everything else in this worthy program, there are two sides, two visions.