Mark Reviews Movies: THE HUMAN FACTOR (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 6, 2021

Director Dror Moreh's documentary The Human Factor expects and only requires a basic understanding of the conflict in the Middle East—namely, the ongoing political and martial battle over the state of Israel, its borders, and the existence of a homeland for the Palestinian people who live in the region. That's the right move for this particular story, which doesn't discuss or debate the history of the region, the establishment and expansion of Israel since its founding (or the circumstances of its founding, for that matter), or the various Palestinian organizations and alliances that have come and gone and remained over the decades. Moreh's focus is on—and, indeed, the entire narrative is founded upon—American officials who, throughout the years, have attempted to broker a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The film doesn't take a side in the conflict, although it does take a very specific perspective. Moreh is on the side of peace, and as glib and naïve as that may sound, it's a perspective that even the American wheelers and dealers for peace in the Middle East admit they have come up short in comprehending. At one point, Moreh, an Israeli filmmaker, actually confronts the career negotiators, asking if they went into these mediations with an intrinsic bias. To one degree or another, each of them says that they did to some degree. It's not them specifically with the bias but the policy of the United States.

The key is that Moreh doesn't ask these questions or confront possible prejudices in an antagonistic way. He is simply curious and probing, trying to get at the heart of why decades of bloodshed and arbitration and promises and repeated failures at compromise haven't taught anyone anything about how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He asks and the negotiators respond, not with hostility, but with melancholy defeat.

There are no simple answers here. The conflict has long been seen on both sides as an existential one—the right of Israel to exist, as a safe home for the Jewish people who have spent so much of their history facing the threat of extermination, and the same right of the Palestinians to have a home, which was once on the land that now is part of the state of Israel. By the end of this anecdotal but fairly thorough film, we might start to wonder if the people involved on all sides—Israeli, Palestinian, American—haven't been asking the right questions.

Moreh's introduction promises a broader and longer view than the film actually delivers, suggesting that we're going to be seeing the full extent of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and assorted negotiations for peace from the end of the Cold War until the present day. In reality, the documentary covers only two Presidential administrations in detail—the latter much more than the former. It's not exactly what we anticipate, but the level of history, told from behind-the-scenes participants, and the specificity of the timeline here is pretty admirable. One almost wonders if Moreh, rushing through the story of conflict and failed talks following the administration of Bill Clinton, is hinting at or planning a follow-up, as soon as more recent officials are ready and willing to be interviewed.

The narrative here begins with the administration of George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker, who see the United States' role as the sole world superpower at the end of the Cold War as an opportunity to arrange a peace between Israel, its neighbors, and the Palestinians. This administration is more than slightly hampered by legislation that refuses to give the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), as well as its chairman Yasser Arafat, a seat at the table. The negotiations have to go through other countries, such as Jordan and Syria, and leaders, such as Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.

If the name and the face look slightly familiar in a contemporary context, it's because his son is now President, immediately following his father, and if some of the stories here about the elder Assad are any indication, the two men aren't far apart in their authoritarian means and ruthless methods. There's an almost surreal quality to such connections and long-lasting participations in the relatively recent history of the conflict and negotiations. We see a young Condoleeza Rice in the room with Baker, and sitting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the backdrop of the early peace talks, leading a very public fight against them in Israel, before becoming a direct, stubborn participant in them for the final years of Clinton's presidency. The faces, like the conflict itself, remain the same, and perhaps that's as much of the problem as anything else.

The bulk of the story revolves around the peace process under Clinton, whose administration gives Arafat, with all of his influence, a direct, if not quite equal (going back to the idea of "bias"), part in the process. The Israeli side is at first represented by then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who comes into power promising to put an end to the violence—on Israel's side, in particular.

Some will not have forgotten and most will be able to assume how all of this ends. Hearing the stories from people who communicated with Rabin and Arafat and were in the room with these men as the talks occurred, we get a thoughtful, hopeful, and ultimately tragic sense of just how close an actual agreement was.

Archival footage and photographs, which are present in The Human Factor, can only tell us so much. Through these stories, Moreh treats this history with an intimate, empathetic perspective, as we come to understand the politics and the players in the conflict and in the peace attempts on a, yes, very human level.

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