THE HUMAN FACTOR
Cert 15 ★★★★
In cinemas now
As much about the art of diplomacy as the depressing state of the Middle East, this rigorous documentary provides fascinating insights into American attempts to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine in the 1990s.
The title comes from Dennis Ross, one of several US negotiators who deliver frank accounts of their efforts.
“You can’t ignore the human factor,” he says of their approach. “Someone who has a human touch treats someone else with respect. Someone who has a human touch doesn’t think they’re going to outsmart anybody.”
Here, we see how the strengths and limitations of that approach defined
America’s efforts to end the conflict. That President Clinton was motivated by a desire for a legacy is one assumption exploded in this compelling account. It was the 1995
assassination of Israel’s peacemaking prime minister Yitzhak Rabin that gave him his mission.
Little details such as the PLO leaders’ fondness for the sitcom The Golden Girls help us see their humanity too.
The belief that Yasser Arafat’s intransigence led to the end of the peace talks is also shot down, though the American mediators concede that cultivating his friendship with Clinton took precedence over addressing the thornier aspects of a proposed peace deal.
For all the US success in helping the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to understand each other better, the talks were always doomed to fail without a peace deal that they could sell to their own people.