I’m not Jewish. I wanted to start with that because that’s usually one of the first things people ask me when they see the film. What was it, then, that compelled me to make this film?

Because this conflict is older than I am. I was born into it and it has stained the milestones of my own life with its senseless violence and destruction. Because waking up with the morning paper plastered with bloody children – both Israeli and Palestinian – was (and is) simply unbearable. Because I just couldn’t understand how fifty years of violence wouldn’t tire at least one side out enough to find a middle ground. So the reason I went, put simply, was to get answers. And though none of them were “easy” ones – in the end, I did get them.

As with so many of the world’s conflicts, the boundaries of this one are largely drawn along religious and geographical lines, lines that have been given a physical presence through the concrete and wire structures that now scar the landscape. The real border, though, lies in the land beneath – where a well of resentment has been entombed by over half a century of violence.  Politics, while continuing to fuel the conflict, is not its source, but merely a reflection of the mindset now firmly rooted in the ethos of both peoples - a living and breathing fear, hatred, and resentment for all that has transpired.

Although a hopeful political dialog has sputtered to life once more, the civilian dialog – the only one with any real capacity to address the conflict’s true source - is only just beginning.  And after absorbing the emotional anguish of the conflict from both sides, I am convinced that it is this dialog that holds the key to any meaningful and lasting peace. More than 200 grassroots organizations are working to nurture that dialog. This is a film about one of them.

-Laura J. Beatty