Original subtitles

It's easily the most contentious piece of real estate

in the world.

And there's no hope, none, of

ever talking about it without pissing somebody, if not

everybody off.

Maybe that's why it's taken me

so long to come here, a place

where even the names of ordinary

things are ferociously disputed.

Where does falafel come from?

Who makes the best hummus?

Is it a fence or a wall?

By the end of this hour, I'll be

seen by many as a terrorist

sympathizer, a Zionist tool, a

self-hating Jew, an apologist

for American imperialism, an

orientalist, socialist, fascist, CIA agent, and worse.

So here goes nothing.

♪

♪

I was raised without religion.

One side of the family long ago, catholic... I think.

The other side, Jewish.

I've never been in a synagogue.

I don't believe in a higher power.

But that doesn't make me any

less Jewish, I don't think.

These guys sandbagging me at the

wailing wall, they don't seem to think so either.

Only half.

Jewish?

Yes.

You a righty?

I'm a righty, yes.

Mazel tov.

Mazel tov.

Thank you, gentlemen.

I've never felt so much like I'm macerating as

something I'm not.

I am instinctively hostile to any kind of devotion.

Certainty is any enemy.

I'm all about doubt, questioning

ones self and the nature of reality.

When they grabbed hold of me and

in a totally nonjudgmental way

essentially... god's happy to have you, here you go.

Oh, man.

My treachery is complete.

Just because I was raised outside the faith with no

particular attachment or loyalty

to Israel doesn't mean that

plenty of people on this earth

don't hate me in principle.

I know that.

But the state of Israel, I never

really knew what to think.

First look around, it's like

everybody says... it's pretty.

It's awesome.

It's urban.

Sophisticated.

Hip.

Like Southern California.

Only nicer.

Then you see the undraftees in

the streets and you start to get the idea.

This is Jerusalem.

I'm taking you through Damascus gate, which is one of

the gates to the old city.

These walls are pretty ancient.

People say they go back to king David.

As history progressed, they built up the wall.

So the top bed is the newest.

And by newest you mean...

Up to about the ottoman time.

The Turks left here about 150 years ago.

And the Brits came and they conquered us.

I wasn't here.

Born here, now cooking in

London, he is the widely known

respected chef and co-author of the book "Jerusalem."

Basically, this city was

divided into two until 1967 when

there was the famous six-day war.

Yep.

And the hall that we're

traveling in now, walking in is east Jerusalem.

It's the Palestinian part.

That was up until '67 belonged to Jordan.

So now it's under Israeli control.

Very controversial because for

the Jews, for the Israelis, the city has been unified.

But for the Palestinian, they

are under occupation, as far as they are concerned.

We just have to go for a falafel

because it's so much part of the culture here.

Again, contentious because Jews

or Israelis make falafel their

own and everybody in the world

thinks falafel is an Israeli food.

It's been done for generations here.

And here, you get falafel that's just been fried.

You don't get it any other way.

When I come to a place like

that, I see there's a few left

from the previous customer, I don't take that.

I want them to fry them for me.

That makes all the difference in the world.

A whole different animal, isn't it?

So is there a historically

provable answer to who invented it?

Who made it first.

The one thing that's very clear

in this part of the world,

Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, it's

been cooked for many, many, many generations.

On the other hand, you get Jews

from Yemen coming here... They say hey, my great uncle

was in Syria at the time.

Hey, I remember distinctly so there is actually no

answer to it.

But the question of food appropriation or who owns the

food.

If you go you can go on arguing about it forever.

The old city is divided into four quarters.

There is Muslim quarter.

There is a Jewish quarter.

There is a Christian quarter.

And there's an Armenian quarter.

Each one functions independently, but people that

live in the certain area are all from that religion.

So here you see these Israeli flags over this house.

So basically Jews have bought

this house, although it's in the Muslim quarter.

That's very controversial

because it breaks the separation

that people would normally expect in this city.

Now we're walking in the steps of Jesus Christ, right?

As I so often do.

So this is villa de la Rosa,

which is the last trip Jesus did

before he was crucified.

People feel very emotional.

They come here and they feel

like oh, my god, I am walking in

the steps of Muhammad, David, or Jesus.

It's like Jesus was here.

I feel like I should be more something.

A little bit more pious?

A little bit.

It's too late for me.

Great.

Get your own crown of thorns?

In answer to the question what would Jesus wear?

Oh no, that's just wrong.

Israel is bordered by Egypt,

Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

In 1967, after the six-day war,

Israel took control of the Gaza

strip, the Sinai peninsula, the

west bank, and east Jerusalem.

In 2003, Israel began construction on a wall along the

green line representing the

Israeli-Palestinian border.

The wall now stretches 450 miles.

When completed, it will span 700 miles.

85% of it in Palestinian territory.

On one hand, there's no doubt

that the number of suicide bombings fell drastically.

On the other, there's this.

You cross from Jerusalem into the west bank.

Also called Judea, Sumaria, also called Palestine.

Since 1967, half a million

settlers have moved here, all in

contravention of international law.

Many in contravention of international law.

Though it seems to make little difference.

They're here and in ever-larger numbers.

This is one of our drivers from

Tel Aviv who I asked about

graffiti on this house near the settlements.

So what is price tagging?

Something happens in a settlement or some attack with

Jews, kids from the settlement

would come and have a price tag for every activity.

So they come to a village like

this, they will destroy cars,

they will write on walls like this.

It says against Arabs, the state

of Israel is alive, and death to the Arabs.

Intimidating.

I mean, you put two targets on my house, I'm moving.

This is Ellie, a settlement with

a population of over 3,000,

relatively isolated from the rest of Israel.

This is the chief executive of

the settlement and its former head of security.

Here you see from up above most of our town.

You see the Palestinian villages all around.

It's an unusual situation.

A lot of your neighbors would

very much like you to not be here.

I know most of them.

And most of them, they are happy that we're here.

Because we... actually we gave

them prosperity for the first 45 years.

Wherever the PLO came, they lost it.

I'm guessing a lot of people would disagree with that

statement.

Radars and cameras.

So from the high ground, you

can see anybody walking at night.

You could see from pretty far out.

Definitely.

Could you identify them after the fact?

Depends.

What we have are protocols that we work with.

And we had our successes.

We drive to another settlement a few miles away.

Hot, sun-bleached, suburban feeling.

Behind its ring of electronic surveillance censors and

security, everything they feel they need.

A school, public transportation, and a petting zoo.

He has lived here for ten years.

He's a wine maker and amateur cook.

You're not kidding around.

The salmon is marinated with

pomegranate juice that... on the

season, I squeeze pomegranates.

I freeze the juice so I'll have it all year round.

Where were you before here?

I was born in Pennsylvania.

So your parents brought you over at age 4?

Yeah.

Kids living in the relative comfort and familiarity of

Pennsylvania.

Heading off to what must have,

at least in part of their mind,

would seem an uncertain.

Yes.

It was very difficult for them.

Almost all Jews say next year,

it's part of prayers that we say all the time.

The Bible, it's all right there.

It all happened here.

That's sort of a nonnegotiable position.

You see prophesies coming true.

Things coming to life.

Mountains that nobody wanted to

live on, nobody dared to... for

thousands of years, nobody wanted this place.

And then finally, we come here

and everything is flourishing again.

It makes you feel good, you know?

You've been here since '90.

You look over the edge there, an Arab village.

Yeah.

There is one that you can see from here.

At any point during that

time, you ever go to anybody's

house, sit down and eat?

Not there, but in other villages.

Ever sat down at a Muslim table?

Muslim table... you host and everybody else...

Coffee.

But not there.

No, because as a religious Jew, I eat only kosher.

So they respect that.

So they don't offer me.

So I've got to ask you about

something that troubled me.

Coming up, the first house

before you come up the drive to

this village, the graffiti on the front... yes.

The targets spray painted on.

Yes.

Whodunit?

Villains.

Bad people.

Kids?

I don't know.

Apparently kids.

When we educate kids, kids are not able to understand

complicated things.

They see the world in black and white.

When you get older, you're able to see the gray.

And when someone hits you...

I understand why kids would do it.

Given what you told me earlier,

identifying the perpetrators

within the realm of possibility?

They're young people.

Why not paint it over?

Good question.

Maybe we should.

You're right.

Elsewhere in the west bank,

just outside of Ramallah meet Betty and Mona.

Two members of a group of women

who call themselves the speed sisters.

The first all-female Palestinian racing team.

Hi.

I'm Tony.

Good to meet you.

When I'm riding a car, I'm the happiest girl ever.

Racing, it's in my blood.

Here in Palestine, it's very small.

There's no roads.

So when I drive, I speed.

I feel free.

Do you find that people underestimated you at first?

At the beginning, they could maybe make fun of us.

But when we got good scores... yeah.

A car doesn't know if you're a woman or a man.

A lot of girls want to join us as speed sisters.

But some of their families are very reserved.

Their don't like their daughters

to be between men racing.

Palestine is a very reserved society.

So are things getting better?

Staying the same, or worse?

You never know what's going to happen in Palestine.

One day it's good and the other

day it's just... you never know.

It's a crazy country.

The local police would prefer

them off the streets for obvious reasons.

But the track here, such as it is, has its drawbacks.

It's basically a parking lot across from the detention

center.

What do they think about this next door?

Do they ever give you problems?

This is an Israeli jail.

One time we were here with speed

sisters and there was problems

because of the prisoners.

So I just stopped my car over there and I was walking.

I wanted to see what's going on.

And the Israeli soldiers, they

came running at me and they start shooting at me.

And I got shot in the back.

It was tear gas.

So my speed sisters, they took me to the hospital.

I fainted.

Have you thought of challenging the Israelis to put

up a team?

I can't race because my car is Palestinian.

What if they come over here?

They're not allowed to enter

the west bank and we're not

allowed to go to Jerusalem, so

how can we race together?

OK, silly question.

It's right there for all to see.

And it feels like something out

of a science fiction film.

This is the wall.

From the other side, from inside

this place, for instance, the

refugee camp in the district of

Bethlehem, it doesn't feel like

anything other than what it is, a prison.

Abed is the founder of the children's theatre center.

So we are at the north entrance of Bethlehem, heading

to the refugee camp.

So this has been here since 1950.

Yes.

It started with tents.

People were under the tents for about seven years.

And later, they started building shelters.

First impressions of the camp, there's a remarkable

number of kids.

Now it's about 6,000 people.

And 2/3 are under 18 years old.

So it's a very young population.

Unfortunately, with the continuing degradation of the

political and economic situation, we are in the

situation where we have no playgrounds anymore.

Children play in the streets

beneath walls covered in images

of martyrs, plane hijackers, political prisoners.

6,000 people, of that number,

66% are under the age of 18.

I don't care where that is in

the world, that's pretty much a

recipe for unruly behavior, I think would be the best.

Well, yes.

Especially when you don't have

any possibilities to evacuate

the anger and the stress in a creative way.

So after I finished my studies,

I came back here and I started

using theatre as one of the most

amazing, powerful, civilized and

nonviolent means to express yourself.

To tell your story.

To be truthful.

And this is for me the remedy to build peace within.

And hopefully help them to think

that they can grow up and change

the world and create miracles.

Without explode themselves.

But to stay alive.

Abed takes me to the martyrs quarter to be fed.

She offers Palestinian cooking

classes, helping her provide for

six children, one of whom is disabled.

In America, kids grow up with

pop stars, sports players.

It's unthinkable for a child to

look up to a politician or to

look up to a military figure.

Sports or entertainment.

Here, kids 4 or 5 years old

every day, they're looking at

somebody who, you know, brought down a plane.

Yeah.

I'm not questioning why that is.

I know.

Do you think it's helpful?

Well, I guess we have a history.

We are people who are under occupation.

They are heroes.

And their heroes are those who resist the occupation.

And to tell you the truth,

sometimes I have been with some

political parties, when they put

images of people who are killed in their houses.

Ahmed's sister, the 29th of

October, 2001, she was killed in

her kitchen by a sniper.

But when these political parties

take this woman and want to make

a montage of photos with her

carrying a gun to say this is

the hero, sorry, this is not the truth.

This woman was killed in her house.

We will go today and ask the

Palestinians who is the great evil?

You ask these kids, who will they recognize?

They recognize a man from Gaza,

Mohamed Assa, a singer who sings.

He becomes more famous than Arafat and everybody else.

This is another image of these times.

You can almost believe for a

minute or two that some kind of peace, some kind of

reconciliation, meeting of the

minds, sanity is possible after you visit Majda.

It's a restaurant in what looks

like an idyllic village in the Judean hills.

It feels like an alternate universe for a number of

reasons.

Someone Jewish.

One is Muslim, from a nearby village.

They're partners, co-owners of

Majda, and also married.

They're unsurprisingly friends of Yotan.

Together they grow and raise

much of what's used in their kitchen.

Their food reflects both their

different backgrounds and their commonalities.

We're going to spoil you now.

Yeah, here you go.

So you grew up in this town.

Yes, in this village.

Where did you grow up?

Near the beach.

Near the beach.

Not the neighborhood.

But we met in the neighborhood.

We work together in hotel.

How did that go down with the families?

Now wonderful.

In the beginning, not so much.

Started with a lot of questions.

Understand that we love each

other and they can do nothing,

so we continue and they support us.

This is your special farm eggs.

Farm eggs.

Peppers from your garden?

Tomato.

That looks awesome beyond words.

It is incredibly beautiful here.

I don't know why I didn't expect that.

A lot of people come and say

it's like Provence, it's like Italy.

You like it?

I do.

Roasted tomatoes, okra.

Onion and mint.

That's all they do.

What they do a lot here is char the hell out of it.

So it's really smoky just from

being in the pan on very high heat.

So generally speaking, who lives in this area?

Mostly Arab... ethnically Arab in this part of town?

I'm the only Jewish in... Hardly any Jewish in the

village.

Zucchini that's been grilled.

Then we use fried yogurt, so that's the sauce.

That's the go-to flavor.

Very typical for Palestinian cooking.

It's good.

I just had this incredibly delicious meal completely

oblivious to the fact that it's entirely vegetarian.

If any of the vegetarian

restaurants in New York served

food that tasted like this, I would actually go there.

I'd consider it.

Fried zucchini with mint.

And little sweet apricots.

It's delicious.

Are you hopeful?

Of course.

I have my children.

I need to say that.

Together we can build something for our kids.

Our future.

That's what we think and that's

what we give the message for our customers.

The fact that it actually

manages to do whatnot so many

chefs try to do here, and that

is sort of mix the Jewish ethnicity or background with

Arab food.

Getting out of Gaza from

Israel is truly one of the most

surreal travel experiences you have on earth.

Over 1.5 million people live in Gaza.

Most of them considered refugees.

Meaning they're not from the

place they're compelled to live now.

In most cases, they're either

prohibited from or unable to leave.

Israel decides who comes and goes.

What gets in and what stays out.

Apart from journalists, aid

workers, emergency responders,

very few people are allowed to cross into Gaza.

In 2005, the Israeli defense

forces left the Gaza strip and

all Israeli settlers were removed.

Now inside Gaza, Hamas is in charge.

Considered a terrorist organization by both the united

states and Israel, they got elected in 2006.

This is Laila Hadan, a native

Gazan, journalist and author of "the Gaza kitchen."

They're not as big as they

used to be, that's primarily

because the fishermen can't go

beyond three to six nautical miles.

If you go beyond, what happens?

They'll shoot at the fishermen, destroy their boats,

cut their fishing nets, they'll detain them.

It's obviously really risky business.

Nine nautical miles, that's

where that deep sea channel is

where you're going to get the really good catches.

Gaza is the last Palestinian

area with access to the coast.

That's really important to remember.

You have the west bank just an

hour away, but many of the

Palestinians, they have never

seen the sea, have never been to the sea.

The family owns a small farm

in the eastern Gaza strip.

She and her husband are unusual

in that they cook together.

This is not typical in this part

of the world or in this culture.

They use their own fresh-killed

chickens to make the Gazan classic.

The traditional Palestinian dish

comprised of layers of fried

eggplant, tomato, potatoes, Caramelized onions, and

chicken sauteed, them simmered in a broth with nutmeg,

cinnamon, cardimum, and rice.

It's a big family.

Children, grandchildren all

living under the same roof, and it can get chaotic.

So let's talk about food and eat food.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

What do we have here?

This is called mahmouba.

Traditionally lamb, in this case chicken.

They're very concerned that we're being very rude.

We're not allowing the others to eat.

Wow.

For me, being from Gaza, being a child of Diaspora, I

always thought food was an interesting way to tell the

Palestinian story.

Being able to discover this lost

history, this Palestinian past.

Plus, the food is really dang good.

That it is.

I think it was also important to be able to provide

Palestinians an image of

themselves that they recognize,

a very humane image, because all

they're seeing in the media,

whether here or there, whether

on Arabic channels or abroad,

you know, is this kind of very

caricatured images of gunned men

and this kind of grim cinder block landscape.

You're not entering into the private homes.

What does a kitchen look like,

or what does a family you see here.

Do you like it, she's asking?

Absolutely delicious.

Really, really good.

Yeah?

She wants you to open a restaurant for her.

Keep cooking like this.

It's really delicious.

Gaza has three distinctive culinary heritage.

Those who hail from villages

that were either depopulated or destroyed in 1948.

And they constitute about 75% of

the population of Gaza.

And they kind of bring with them

their own distinct cuisine.

That's very different from the

cuisine of the city, Gaza city,

which tends to use much more

heat, much more chili peppers,

from the cuisine of the coast,

which is rich with seafood, of course, and a very

sophisticated, very urbane cuisine.

I guess the first question

would be, in your lifetime, will

you be able to visit Yahba?

She says she hopes she can.

She also hopes she can go to Jerusalem as well.

So she's optimistic.

She's saying... first she said

you're not allowing us to.

Then corrected and said the

Israelis aren't allowing us.

Go, go.

This is a normal tone of voice.

Not upset, by the way.

This is how we talk.

We yell.

What's he saying?

Give me a permit.

If they allow, of course I'll go.

Laila's got something to show me.

A watermelon salad she discovered on her recent trip

here that's really piqued her interest.

So off we go.

This will take a minute.

We arrive at what looks like a

pretty serious gathering.

This is a Duwan, and we're soon

joined by her husband Abu.

It's an area where the elders

gather to, you know, resolve

community problems, to kind of advise.

All these guys are originally

from an area now part of Israel,

so they're bound together by

traditions and a way of life

very different from here, where

they've been relocated and lived since 1948.

Does he think he'll be able to

go to his ancestral homeland in

his lifetime, his children's lifetime?

What's his guess?

This enemy.

And we understand that.

We hope.

Me, my son.

My daughter.

So what they're making now...

It's basically baby watermelon, underripe watermelon.

This is sort of a specialty of

Southern Gaza, but also Sinai.

It's usually something that's

made specifically by men, I was told here.

You can see they're fire

roasting the baby watermelons.

They cover them with aluminum foil.

They put them through a wire,

kind of like a rustic skewer.

And then they just throw them in there.

And the idea is that they take

the pulp out, so that's what's going on.

And then what they do while

that's fire roasting is they

knead an unlevined dough over

there with whole-wheat, barley,

plenty of rich, extra virgin olive oil.

And then they throw that into

the pit as well, or they dig a

pit in the sand over there.

Right in the coals?

Yep.

And they mix that all together.

So it's interesting.

Because right now, we're about,

what, 35 minutes away from Gaza city.

Ask anyone in Gaza city if

they've heard of this dish and, no.

So even in an area as small as

Gaza, you see this very wide variation.

They're going to clean it up.

Many, if not most of these

guys, are not too sympathetic to

my country or my ethnicity, I'm guessing.

But there's that hospitality thing.

Anywhere you go in the Muslim world, it seems.

You feed your guests and do your

best to make them feel at home.

We have to eat.

You're supposed to eat this with your hands.

Mm, very good.

He's saying if you eat this,

you shouldn't have another meal for three days.

Where does this dish come from?

This is a dish that's native

to Southern Gaza, the Sinai,

sort of the desert Bedouin areas.

All the food I've had so far

in Gaza has been very different

than in anything else I've had in the Arab world.

Different flavor spectrum.

Totally.

It's kind of it's own little gastronomical bubble.

I find that the food has more

flavor, I get a better cepsry experience.

They have children, and they

like to eat with their hands.

He's saying god gave us hands to eat with, not spoons.

One can be forgiven for thinking, when you see how

similar they are, the two

peoples, both of them cook with

pride, eat with passion, love

their kids, love the land in

which they live or the land they

dream of returning to, who live

so close, who are locked in such

an intimate, if deadly embrace

might somehow, some day, figure

out how to live with each other.

But that would be very mushy thinking indeed.

Those things in the end probably

don't count for much at all.

Gatan Galkowitz runs a

restaurant just seven miles from the Gaza strip.

You and your family have paid

the most unbelievable price.

My daughter was killed by mortar sent by Hamas.

In some Israeli towns and

villages within close proximity

of the Gaza strip, bus stops

double as bomb shelters and air

raid sirens warn of incoming

missiles fired from less than a mile away.

Rockets and mortar shells have

been known to fall from the sky

in these parts and no one understands the consequences

more than this man.

You were not a fervent Zionist.

No.

You were not an orthodox Jew.

No.

And yet here you are, at the

spear point, right at the dip.

Here's your restaurant.

There is a shelter.

Here you are.

After the death of my daughter, I just start to talk,

to whom?

To people who want to listen.

I know that my daughter was

killed for no reason and I know

that people on the other side

have been killed for no reason.

Childrens, old people.

I have been a soldier in Gaza.

I saw very poor people.

I know there is interest in keeping this poor people.

You can go far, far, but the

bottom line is, let's stop with the suffering.

You know, I went to this settler community.

Nice people.

And I said to you, you know, they were nice.

And you said, you said, you said, they're all nice.

They're all nice.

I know, nice, very nice Palestinian people.

They're all nice, but if you

scratch, if you push, they all

want... they'll all say, throw them in the sea.

Most of the people, they don't talk.

They are very upset.

They are fed up.

And the same goes from the other side to us.

You have to find the right

people on both village, also on

the down, also on the up, and maybe they talk.

And I am sure that is possible.

The opportunities to do that here are very, very, very

limited, it seemed.

I agree.

And I mean, one doesn't even

have to speak metaphorically,

because there is an actual wall.

Or a fence, depending on who you're talking to.

Fence or wall.

No, it's a big wall.

It's ugly.

It's really ugly.

You can see it, it's not far away from here.