Review: 'No Other Land' dissects the silenced struggles of Palestinians to the bone

KARACHI:

As a convoy moves in to raze brick houses to the ground, a community of villagers cries out. That's the limit to the brave front they can put up, as long as it doesn't upset their armed oppressors enough to open fire. These uniformed individuals then cite impassive demolition papers to justify bearing down on homes made of love and labour in Masafer Yatta in Palestine.

A woman watches her quarters, her belongings, every corner of memory in her precious home being crushed to dust. Not subdued by aloof demands of relocation, she protests, "Where do we go? We have no other land. That's why we suffer for it."

This picture might be familiar to you if you're on social media and have scrolled through countless pleas and tears entreating justice, all emerging from one Palestine torn apart by Israel's genocide. In that spirit, Palestinian activist Basel Adra picked up a camera to film his documentary, No Other Land, the moment he believed that the beginning of the end had become unavoidable.

It's harrowing enough to watch social media to spell out the atrocities for you within a minute or two. But as I sat for over two hours at the screening for No Other Land organised by The Second Floor (T2F), I was compelled to face the spine-chilling reality with an intimacy that was difficult to evade. And that's exactly the point.

Following a non-linear structure, the story of Masafer Yatta through Basel's eyes begins in 2019. In addition, Basel's own memories from 1999 slip into the narrative time and again to put into perspective that Israel's brutality following the October 7, 2023 attack wasn't merely a response but one aided by a veneered pretext.

Letting it sink in

Be it class debates or close-knit settings discussing the Palestinian struggle, I sit quietly and listen as intently as my twitchy mind allows me to. But when it comes to contributing to the conversation, I often find myself struggling to string together pointers that haven't already been said.

Unsurprisingly, the same happened as No Other Land unfolded before my eyes. I was rendered speechless, as the cousin accompanying me would say.

Basel's sturdy sense of hope along with the smiles that his people sport as defense are as heart-rending as they are warm, and just as soul-crushing as when Basel himself admits to Yuval that he's losing energy.

It felt futile — speaking from a distance, watching from a distance. Then I saw Harun Abu Aram.

Mirrored fragments

The documentary shows Harun, an unarmed resident of Al-Tuwanah (a village to the south of Hebron), resisting as Israeli troops seize his electric generator. Moments into the heated escalation, the troops shoot Harun, cruelly subjecting him to lifelong paralysis.

As time prolongs his suffering, Harun's mother hopes for one of two miracles: for God to take her life and restore her son to full health in exchange, or for death to relieve her son once and for all. Her second prayer is answered.

Watching Harun and his family struck me with heart-sinking unease and thoughts that aren't easy to confront or pen down. Even after the screen faded to black, their plight stayed with me, haunted me to some capacity. It followed me back home to my bedridden aunt.

For months, I have been struggling to put into words how I feel. When you're informed from the distance of a phone call that a loved one — a particularly lively one — has bled from the inside, the first companion to comfort you is denial. There are no tears, no adrenaline rush, no grief — just restless pacing and sleepless midnights that fade to tomorrows. Over and over again.

When you see her again, you can barely recognise her. She looks the same, smooth-skinned and relaxed as she always has. But she's no longer fishing for compliments over an outfit she carefully picked or dissolving flimsy debates with a harmless joke. She just rests. That's all she prefers doing these days.

The denial tricks you into thinking it's gone. But then you revisit old texts and send new ones for no real reason. Some days, you surprise yourself at your eagerness to initiate drawn-out conversations despite knowing that she can't respond. Every now and then, you recall a vivid memory because at least in your mind, her verve is eternal.

Regularly, you squeeze her hand, fix her scarf, help her move, and cling onto hope. But now, you sit with the reminder that hope is a luxury in a war-torn world — and your smaller world is safely tucked away from it.

Denial is not a helpful instrument for Harun's loved ones, who wait with bated breath for both good and bad news. Where they possess a wealth of love, they are robbed of resources. There is no comfort zone for them to retreat to. All they have is hope. And hope can be deceptive.

It hurts differently when you watch Harun's family reserve the warmest blankets for him; it hurts close to home, even. But it can never hurt quite the same because no one can snatch those blankets from you or ruthlessly bury them under rubble. Because many of us didn't grow up surrounded by echoes of the same desperate question: "Why is it only illegal for us?"

From the river to the sea

At the time of writing this, a video has been circulating on social media: a silhouette of a girl moving hurriedly as she flees a line of flames rising well over her height. Israeli forces bombed her school, Fahmi al-Jargawi School, in Gaza while she was still inside.

Earlier, the BBC reported that an Israeli airstrike targeted the home of a doctor in Gaza. While on duty at al-Tahrir hospital, she received the news that nine of 10 children had been killed. The eldest was 12 years old.

In 2024, heavy rain poured down on over hundreds of tents of displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis, as per Al Jazeera. Israel still blocked aid to the civilians.

In 2023, medics evacuated premature babies from Gaza's al-Shifa Hospital after the Israeli army raided it over claims that Hamas was secretly operating from there.

In 2020, Israeli authorities shot down 27 Palestinians, including seven minors, across occupied territories.

And the scroll keeps on rolling. Individuals become stories, stories form headlines, and headlines are buried under statistics.

It is as Basel said as he accepted the Oscar for his documentary, "No Other Land reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still we resist and call on the world to take serious action to stop this injustice."

Against the shelling and gunfire, Palestinian resistance — as No Other Land depicts — births a throng fuelled by hope, chants with the ease of an anthem, and marches on.

And resistance is the weight they all shoulder. It looks like mothers humouring their children out of despair, fathers stirring up spirits, and children standing up against armed soldiers as their schools are demolished. It exists in one shared sentiment: "They'll never make Palestinians leave this land."

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