Hollywood, Devon Park, Palestine

There’s also the sexual competing between mother and daughter, highlighted in the film by a real blurring of identities through dress sense and wild behaviour – we viewers all had difficulties at times picking out the mother and daughter in certain scenes. Both females have their moments of dysfunctional fantasy, though there is an essential bond and a positivity which helps with grounding. They’re surrounded too by other problem, complicating people, with no wiseheads to neatly place the issues ‘in a nutshell’ as the girl’s time-pressed, ever-absent father wants them placed.

Robert Fisk was interesting this morning on the possibly late Arafat, describing him as in the late stages of his career having failed his people, being used by the Israelis as the Palestinians’ policeman, loathed of course by them and having lost a great deal of legitimacy in the wider world due to corruption and inflexibility. The Israelis, many of them, are celebrating his demise, while the Palestinians may have ultimately more reason to celebrate, if they can find a less corrupt, less dictatorial leader able to express their aspirations and stand up to the Israeli leadership with more authority and more nous. After all, the Palestinians have many good arguments on their side in this struggle, the bottom line always being that they were the ones who were dispossessed.