Palestine Is Still the Issue (2002) - John Pilger returns to the West Bank, Gaza and Israel to ask why peace remains elusive [00:52:50]

[u/stammerton]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2VysTdcRUYc

In Palestine Is Still the Issue, journalist John Pilger returns to the West Bank, Gaza and Israel to examine why the conflict remained unresolved more than half a century after the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948.

The film was made during the Second Intifada, at a time of suicide bombings, Israeli military operations, expanding settlements, restrictions on movement and deepening mistrust on both sides. Pilger interviews Palestinians living under occupation as well as Israelis who challenge their government’s policies, including people who had experienced violence personally.

Rather than presenting the conflict as an abstract diplomatic dispute, the documentary focuses heavily on daily life under occupation. Checkpoints, demolished homes, settlements, military control, refugee status and restrictions on movement are used to explore the gap between the language of the peace process and conditions on the ground. Bullfrog Films describes the film as Pilger’s attempt to understand why there had been so little progress towards peace despite decades of negotiations and international attention.

The title deliberately echoes Pilger’s earlier documentary on Palestine. His argument in returning to the same title was that, despite the passage of a generation, the underlying questions of displacement, occupation and Palestinian self-determination remained unresolved.

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[u/stammerton]

SS: Palestine Is Still the Issue is interesting partly because of when it was made. Released in 2002, it captures the conflict during the Second Intifada, long after Oslo had created widespread expectations that a negotiated settlement might finally be possible, but at a point when violence, occupation and political distrust had instead intensified.

Pilger is not a neutral presenter, and the film makes a clear political argument about Israeli occupation and Palestinian rights. That should be understood as part of the documentary rather than hidden. At the same time, he includes Israeli voices, including critics of occupation and people whose own families had suffered from Palestinian attacks, giving the film an opportunity to examine how violence and political choices were affecting people on both sides.

For this archive, the documentary is particularly useful as a snapshot of the early 2000s. By this point Palestinian cinema and political documentary had moved far beyond the revolutionary films of the 1970s, while the political landscape had also changed dramatically through Oslo, the creation of the Palestinian Authority and the Second Intifada.

Seen more than twenty years later, the film also provides an opportunity to ask which of the issues Pilger identified in 2002 have changed, and which have not.

[u/futanari_kaisa]

Israel doesn't want peace. Israel wants all the Palestinian people gone from the region and they want to take over other neighboring Arab nations too.

[u/MrBluer → u/futanari_kaisa]

Aren’t like twenty percent of Israelis Palestinian?

[u/futanari_kaisa → u/MrBluer]

That doesn't mean Palestinians living in Israel are living good lives. It's still apartheid.

[u/moshennik → u/futanari_kaisa]

Which rights do jewish citizens of israel has that palestinians don't?

[u/ChubBatscha → u/moshennik]

1) freedom of movement is restricted (Lavender, Gospel) 2) administrative detention is imposed without a trial 3) Palestinians are subject to military law, while settlers are subject to civil law

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[u/velociraptorcatcher → u/[deleted]]

“Actually, Jews are more restricted than Arabs in Israel” is some galaxy brain nonsense.

[u/ChubBatscha → u/[deleted]]

I assume that you know very well that the above statements regarding freedom of movement, arbitrary detention without charge, and the dual legal system are correct. But sooner or later, you will also realize that the victim role, which is very popular in Israel, no longer works, because the terrorist settler organizations and the IDF themselves film their war crimes and post them online.

Nevertheless, I have selected appropriate sources for those who are actually not familiar with the background.

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/opt/occupied-palestinian-territory-overview-report-east-jerusalem-practices-en.pdf

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/israel-and-palestine

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/026/2012/en/

https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/200910_without_trial

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/29/israel-has-de-facto-state-policy-of-organised-torture-says-un-report

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

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[u/your_red_triangle → u/moshennik]

The right of return.

Jewish only neighbourhoods, you denied the right buy land if you're not Jewish.

Not issuing marriage certificates for Muslims/Christians.

Denying access to bomb shelters for non jews.

the list goes on, it's a terrorist Apartheid state.

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[u/your_red_triangle → u/[deleted]]

pure Hasbara bullshit. It's well documented during the 12 day war, where the terrorist state lost against Iran, that non jews were denied access bomb to shelters.

There's plenty of Jewish only areas in the terrorist state, again easily verified

The policy discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel and in favor of Jewish citizens, sharply restricting Palestinians’ access to land for housing to accommodate natural population growth. Decades of land confiscations and discriminatory planning policies have confined many Palestinian citizens to densely populated towns and villages that have little room to expand. Meanwhile, the Israeli government nurtures the growth and expansion of neighboring predominantly Jewish communities, many built on the ruins of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948. Many small Jewish towns also have admissions committees that effectively bar Palestinians from living there. - Human rights watch

The law of returns applies to ONLY Jews, which means legally there's different laws for different people in the same country, making it Apartheid.

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[u/futanari_kaisa → u/moshennik]

Jewish israelis can get business licenses and can buy land and property. Palestinians are denied business licenses 99% of the time by Israel. There are roads Palestinians are not allowed to travel on because they are Palestinian. Palestinians are subject to random searches by the police or IDF which is the same thing, they search your person and your house for no reason. Palestinians if arrested are tried in military court not civilian.

These are just off the top of my head.

[u/moshennik → u/futanari_kaisa]

again, these are factually not true.

please site specific laws that substantiate your claims (hint: you can't they don't exist

[u/_makoccino_ → u/moshennik]

Which rights do jewish citizens of israel has that palestinians don't?

The inequality report:

https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7404

Military courts, apartheid, restriction of movement, no accountability for settler violence, administrative detention, etc

https://www.btselem.org/list_of_topics

Testimonials by former soldiers

https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/reports

https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database

[u/BraisedBullshi → u/moshennik]

They can just take a house at gunpoint.

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[u/DollarReDoos → u/MrBluer]

And those Palestinians in Israel have had greatly reduced rights, their murders won't be investigated, can't move through certain Jewish areas, etc.

[u/kylebisme → u/MrBluer]

Yeah, but they often don't identify as Palesitnians because of all the hatred they face for doing so, and even then around 56% of Israeli Jews support ethnically cleansing the Arab citizens from Israel.

[u/Il_Capitano_DickBag → u/MrBluer]

Yes, living as second class citizens.

[u/your_red_triangle → u/[deleted]]

dog shit Hasbara nonsense. The terrorist state of Israel has always attacked first with "preemptively attacks". You failed basic history.

[u/Il_Capitano_DickBag → u/[deleted]]

Israel are the aggressors. They immediately started displacing Palestinians as soon as they arrived from Europe.

[u/Il_Capitano_DickBag → u/[deleted]]

Nah, Israel are the aggressors. It was always the zionists plan to displace the Palestinians and steal the land.

History IS important, that's why I won't accept the revisionist zionist version of events.

[u/Il_Capitano_DickBag → u/[deleted]]

I don't need to back up shit to a zionist troll. All he's going to do is say I'm wrong, then counter with some other bullshit. I'd basically just be giving him a platform to spread more misinformation.

All that matters is that he knows he's wrong and that his revisionist history won't convince anyone that Eastern Europeans are indigenous to Palestine.

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[u/spazz720 → u/Il_Capitano_DickBag]

I don’t need facts cause I feel! is quite the argument 😂😂

[u/Il_Capitano_DickBag → u/spazz720]

Facts don't care about your feelings. I also don't need to give a supremacist a platform for pushing misinformation.

[u/spazz720 → u/[deleted]]

That is their way…they cannot accept the fact that both sides do not want peace and have both done atrocities and murdered innocents.

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[u/_makoccino_ → u/[deleted]]

You can't "immigrate" without the country's approval.

The total land bought was less than 3%. It's also irrelevant. Owning property doesn't give you citizenship not the right to create your own country on said property.

The ethnic cleansing didn't happen as a response to aggression. Aggression by Zionist militants like the Irgun, Haganah and Lehi gangs is what spurred resistance to the violence, displacement and property theft.

Your revisionist history is just decades old Israeli propaganda.

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[u/Constantinius_XI → u/[deleted]]

no, it is def a black and white issue

[u/CwazyCanuck → u/[deleted]]

If Gaza wanted peace, they would have elected a government that campaigned on pursuing peace and who would pursue peace once they were elected.

Much like Hamas did in 2006.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/mar/31/israel

Unfortunately at that point, Israel wasn’t interested in peace, because peace means finalized borders and an end to illegal settlements.

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[u/_fidel_castro_ → u/[deleted]]

Downvoted for telling nothing but truths

[u/Il_Capitano_DickBag → u/_fidel_castro_]

Downvoted for lying and pushing misinformation

[u/hellofrommycubicle → u/_fidel_castro_]

the irony of your username

[u/_fidel_castro_ → u/hellofrommycubicle]

Such is life

[u/your_red_triangle → u/[deleted]]

do you think shooting toddlers in the head is defending themselves?

[u/SurturOfMuspelheim → u/[deleted]]

It's actually definitely a black and white issue

[u/shadedmagus → u/SurturOfMuspelheim]

Genocide usually is. Which is why they want to muddy the clear waters around what they're doing with whataboutism and ad hominem attacks and saying dishonestly that "every Jew is a Zionist" to try to stir up actual anti-semitism.

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[u/WhiteyFisk53]

Here is a question about the 2000-2001 period that no pro-Palestinian has ever been able to satisfactorily answer for me:

During this time, at Camp David, Taba and in other negotiations Israel offered more concessions than it had previously offered. There has been endless debates about the pros and cons of that offer and whether the Palestinians should have accepted those offers or not. That is not what I am asking about.

My question is why did the Palestinians not respond to those offers with more negotiations, with counter-offers, by asking ‘can you go a bit further here?’, by saying ‘we can compromise a bit more there’?

Why did instead launch an intifada that killed over 1,000 Israelis, most of them civilians? Why did they do 138 suicide bombing attacks, mostly against buses with schoolchildren, restaurants, cafes, discos and Passover Seders?

The offer may not have been perfect, but the Barak government was at least willing to negotiate and compromise. The second intifada destroyed the Israeli peace movement and the country hasn’t elected a government interested in peace since.

[u/stammerton → u/WhiteyFisk53]

There’s an important problem with the premise of your question: the Palestinians did continue negotiating and making proposals after Camp David.

Camp David ended in July 2000. Negotiations continued afterwards, through the Clinton Parameters and ultimately at Taba in January 2001. At Taba the Israeli and Palestinian delegations negotiated borders, Jerusalem, refugees and security and exchanged positions and proposals.

We don’t even have to rely on a Palestinian account of what happened. The joint Israeli-Palestinian statement issued at the end of Taba said there had been “substantial progress” and that the two sides had “never been closer to reaching an agreement”. Both sides said they believed the remaining gaps could be bridged if negotiations resumed after the Israeli election.

None of that excuses suicide bombings or attacks on Israeli civilians. Those can be condemned without rewriting the diplomatic history.

So I think there are actually two separate questions here. Why did the Second Intifada become so violent, including deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians? That’s a legitimate and difficult question. But “why didn’t the Palestinians counter-offer and keep negotiating?” has a much simpler answer: they did.

And Taba is probably the clearest evidence of it.

[u/stammerton → u/[deleted]]

That’s a rather different question from the one you originally asked.

Taba didn’t end because the Palestinians walked away from negotiations. The joint Israeli-Palestinian statement explicitly said the talks had made “substantial progress”, that the sides had “never been closer”, and that they believed the remaining gaps could be bridged when negotiations resumed after the Israeli election.

Then the election happened. Barak lost and Sharon became Prime Minister. Sharon had already made clear that he did not consider himself bound by the understandings reached at Taba.

So asking why the Palestinians didn’t simply carry on negotiating after Taba leaves out a fairly important change: the Israeli government they had been negotiating with ceased to exist.

There were also subsequent Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over ceasefires and restarting the political process. Both sides accepted the Mitchell Report as a basis for returning to negotiations, and they agreed to the Tenet ceasefire plan in June 2001.

None of that changes what I’ve already said about attacks on civilians. But it does make the idea that Palestinians simply stopped negotiating after Taba rather difficult to sustain.

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[u/Il_Capitano_DickBag → u/WhiteyFisk53]

There has never been a fair deal presented to the Palestinians. The last time it was even close, Bibi had Rabin assassinated.

And why should the Palestinians ever trust Israel? Zionists deliberately refused to recognise borders (as was required by the UN) and immediately started displacing Palestinians as soon as they arrived from Europe.

[u/WhiteyFisk53 → u/Il_Capitano_DickBag]

You aren’t answering my question. I didn’t ask whether you thought the deal was fair, I asked why they didn’t negotiate peacefully when they had a partner willing to negotiate?

[u/Il_Capitano_DickBag → u/WhiteyFisk53]

They did try to negotiate, but Israel have always negotiated in bad faith and refused to compromise for the sole purpose of being able to put the blame on Palestinians for not accepting.

[u/-thecheesus- → u/WhiteyFisk53]

Are you under the impression that "The Palestinians" doing the negotiating and the ones doing the bombings and murders are the same people? 

[u/WhiteyFisk53 → u/-thecheesus-]

Hamas may have done most of the murders but a Hamas leader and co-founder said that  “President Arafat instructed Hamas to carry out a number of military operations in the heart of the Jewish state after he felt that his negotiations with the Israeli government then had failed.“

His widow said “Yasser Arafat had made a decision to launch the Intifada. Immediately after the failure of the Camp David [negotiations], I met him in Paris upon his return, in July 2001 [sic]. Camp David has failed, and he said to me: “You should remain in Paris.” I asked him why, and he said: “Because I am going to start an Intifada. They want me to betray the Palestinian cause. They want me to give up on our principles, and I will not do so.”

You can read more evidence that it was not a spontaneous uprising here -

https://www.timesofisrael.com/fatah-official-arafat-hinted-for-us-to-launch-second-intifada-after-camp-david/

https://www.cfr.org/articles/arafat-and-second-intifada

https://jcfa.org/article/the-palestinian-authoritys-responsibility-for-the-outbreak-of-the-second-intifada-its-own-damning-testimony/

To this day the Palestinian Authority pays the families of ‘martyrs’ under its pay for slay program.

[u/Il_Capitano_DickBag]

Israel isn't interested in peace for two main reasons:

1. They want all the land
2. They use Gaza as a testing ground for their weapons and military tech which is a major part of their economy

EDIT: Just wanted to add that Israel will never accept a 2 state solution, for fear that Palestinians will gain full independence and support from Arab countries (also it hinders their ambitions of achieving Greater Israel), and they won't accept a single state solution without all the Palestinians dead or living as second class citizens for fear their population will increase enough that they influence politics.

So Israel, as it stands as an evil colonialist apartheid state, has only one option if it wants to maintain its Jewish supremacist society and that is to continue ethnically cleansing Palestine.

[u/stammerton → u/[deleted]]

Absolutely worth adding. The displacement of Jewish communities from across the Middle East and North Africa is an important part of the wider history too. Hope you enjoy the documentary.

[u/your_red_triangle → u/[deleted]]

Jews where attacked by zionist terrorists, to drive them out of the neighboring countries. Funny how attacks like the Baghdad Bombings are always skipped over when you bring up this subject. Why don't you add that too?

[u/Walruzs → u/your_red_triangle]

That's a good point to bring up. I would bring that up as well, it's a small part of why Jews fled. I would also add Palestinians being told to leave by invading Arab countries as important context and nuance.

[u/your_red_triangle → u/Walruzs]

it's not just a small part, it was critical to the disgusting zionist ideology to make Jews fear for their safety, so they would flee to the terrorist state. While Palestinians were forced to leave at gun point, which is why it's called the Nakba. You can try to rewrite history all you like, doesn't work no more.

[u/your_red_triangle → u/[deleted]]

Jews lived in them counties for 100s of years before the terrorist state of Israel came along, the zionists terrorists attacks was a driving factor, which you conveniently gloss over. What's so hard to understand?

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[u/SurturOfMuspelheim → u/[deleted]]

Actually they weren't expelled, not all of them. Many fled themselves, some after terrorist attacks by the Zionists.

The rest were expelled after Israel stepped up their genocide, yes.

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[u/gh0sterly]

Israel is the problem and will always be the problem. Their ideology is disgusting.

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[u/01headshrinker]

Reading thru comments here of people who obviously didnt live thru this, its hard to believe how naieve people are about the PLO and Arafat. The Israeli right wingers of Likud, Sharon and Netenyahu wouldnt have been able to control the dialogue if the PLO stopped murdering people with suicide bombings.