David and Fatima: A movie review

David and Fatima is your modern day Romeo and Juliet, with a dash of belly dancing, deserts, IDF soldiers, and suicide bombers, aka today's Palestine/Israel, depending on where your viewpoints lie.
Fatima is an 18 year old Palestinian Muslim who is planning on becoming a doctor. Her parents expect the best out of her and that she should be an obedient Muslim.
David is an 18 year old Israeli Jew who loves and wants to pursue a career in photography, but must face reality that he will soon be drafted into the IDF. Unlike other Israelis, he sympathizes with the Palestinians and would like to learn more about their lives and culture and does this by taking pictures. His parents also expect him to serve in the IDF, be an obedient Jew, and become a lawyer or a doctor.
One day, Fatima and David bump into each other, and their lives change for better or worse.
It turns out, their families know each other because they ran into each other when they were both born (coincidentally, Fatima and David have the same birthday), and Fatimas father helped deliver David.
From then, comes a rare relationship between an unlikely mix.
After a while, reality seeps into their love, and they must confront the fact that neither of their family, or religions accept their relationship. It's your typical forbidden romance.

I give this movie a 2/5. I liked it because it had an interesting plot and story, however if I made the movie, I'd change a lot of things about it.

First and foremost, the acting was awful. Just--awful. The accents were obviously fake, and with a quick google search of the cast I found out the main characters weren't even Israeli or Palestinian. Heck, the actress behind Fatima wasn't even Arab or Muslim.

The Arabs were painted over as barbaric, violent, misogynistic men, and oppressed hijabis who needed saving. It was evident when Fatima explains to David about honor killings, and describes that luckily, her father is more open-minded about her life, which is different than most Arab fathers. As if honor killings are the norm in Arab households? Also, Fatima's mom is painted as a woman who is powerless under her husbands control, and that she shouldn't disagree with him or get in his way. 

Fatima's potential fiance was often violent as well, and very pushy towards Fatima. When they went out on a date, he ordered that she take off her hijab, and as the powerless Muslim girl that she is, she does so. Then, at the end (SPOLIER ALERT!!!!!) he shoots David with a keffiyeh on. It gave the impression that Palestinian freedom fighters were more like terrorists.

What I did like about this movie however, was it's bridging it's gap between the two cultures, and showing that they have more in common than would be thought and I appreciated the fact that the movie did in fact show a sympathy for Palestine. The naive teenage girl in me was also awestruck by the "love overcomes all obstacles" type of theme going on within the movie. 

I really did like the idea of the movie, and would definitely watch a better remake of this, however this specific movie did not depict the Palestinian struggle well and it was obvious that it did not have much background knowledge on the lives of Palestinians and Arabs, as well as the diversity in the mindset of Jews. It was quite all around unrealistic in a way that could've been avoided. 

A very brief history of Palestine and the conflicts with Israel

Palestine is a country located in the Middle East. It borders Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Well known and religious cities in Palestine include Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

The Palestine vs. Israel issue is definitely considered a complicated and controversial subject. People who support Israel are considered "Zionists." The definition of Zionism is the movement for the protection of a Jewish state currently known as Israel. It was a political organization began by Theodore Herzl in 1857.

The United Nations imposed the Partition Plan of Palestine that decided it would break Palestine and Israel in half. 

The Arabs nor the Israelis were very happy with this, and so went many wars and conflicts the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, where Palestinians rejected the partition plan because they felt that they deserved the right to all of their land, and not just half. After the war, the 1949 Armistice Agreements established separation lines between the two. Israel controlled areas originally designated for Palestine, Transjordan controlled the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip. The Six-Day War was fought between June 5th-10th in 1967, with Israel being victorious and seizing control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. The U.N. Security Council called for Israel's withdrawal from territories occupied, based on Resolution 242, the "land for peace" formula. 

In 1974, the Palestine Liberation Organization was recognized as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The intifada was another resistance organization and uprising that was sparked by more than 20 years of military occupation, oppression, and confiscation of land. Between 1987 and 1983, over a thousand Palestinians were killed and more thousands injured, detained, or imprisoned in Israel or deported from Palestinian territories. 

Peace negotiations started in 1993, with the Oslo Accords. It was the first direct, face to face agreement between Israel and the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) and was signed and intended to provide a process for relations and affairs between the two parties. However, in 1995 when Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. Since then, many peace proposals, including the Camp David Summit (2000), Taba Summit (2001), the Road Map for Peace (2002), and the Arab Peace Initiative (2002 and 2007) have made no success. 

Many issues remain to be settled between Israelis and Palestinians before an independent state of Palestine is formed, but negotiations are ongoing.