50 years of Arab-Israeli conflict, by Norma Percy
Regional, History, 6/11/1998

Norma Percy, a director in the production company Brian Lapping Associates Ltd., has been making award-winning documentary series with Brian Lapping for over a decade and has produced a series of six programs on the Arab - Israeli conflict to be broadcast in 1998 on the BBC, PBS and in twenty countries in the Middle East, Europe, Australia and Japan.

In her "The 50 Year War" between Israel and the Arabs, Percy started its first program with the title "Establishing a presence 1948- 56," in which she highlights three main episodes: Israel's creation war of 1948, the Suez war in 1956 and the Arab setback war of 1967."

In her meeting with Syrian reporters on June 3 at the American Culture Center in Damascus Percy said that she, together with her team, spent two and a half years completing this work, of which most efforts were mainly spent on research, some filming, less editing. She added that what takes the time is to choose the stories and find the people, noting that in the Middle East: "We kept having to come back, which is what made it so long and so expensive."

On how she could get people to appear she continued: "Just keep asking and asking again. Tell them who has already agreed to speak and that this will be the chance to put out their side of the story."

Percy said her experience in Syria was difficult but rewarding: "It took the longest and was the hardest" but here efforts were repaid by "wonderful interviews with many Syrian officials."

Speaking about objectivity and whether she is biased toward either of the conflicting sides, Percy said, "If I am biased, I will be biased to the story itself; our task was to give evidence by the decision-makers themselves." She added, "I had two experts on Middle East affairs; one Israeli Ahron Bregman, living in London, who wrote his doctorate on the 1967 war and the Egyptian Jihan al-Tahri, a journalist who has written a book on Yasser Arafat." She said the most controversial thing is the starting point, "as we have decided to start with May 15, 1948, for just a practical reason, when we can still have people to interview."

The documentary, she added, is a political work: "I am incredibly interested in details," adding, "We covered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which stood for the Israeli 'aggressive' attitude towards Lebanon." She elaborated that should she have been given the chance once again she would have produced the documentary in 12 installments instead of six and added value in its historical content, especially Arab-Israeli peace negotiations and the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon and the Golan.

However, heated debate took place over the documentary on the extent of its credibility, its negligence of the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict before 1948, its concentration on the Israeli side, rather than highlighting most recent events, especially the Israeli destruction of the occupied city of Quneitra in 1974, as the series shows that the city has been already destroyed when the Israelis got into it in 1967, not when they left it in 1974. She promised to revise the English version of the program concerning the destruction of Quneitra.

Earlier the American Cultural Center in Damascus screened the documentary's six installments on June 1 - 3 for elite intellectuals, men of letters and journalists.

Previous Stories:
  Syrian PA speaker confers with Australian counterpart   (6/8/1998)
  Memories of a 1948 survivor   (5/12/1998)
  Interviews: 50th anniversary of Deir Yassin massacre   (4/10/1998)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search