Talking to the children.

• Author: DiNovella, Elizabeth
• Position: The documentary film, 'Promises,' focuses on Israeli and Palestinian children

In the no man's land between the Muslim and Jewish Quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem, a burping contest between two boys begins. Shlomo, an ultra-orthodox Jewish boy, says he doesn't know any Arabs and has no real interest in meeting them. A young Palestinian boy comes over to check out the scene. Standing right next to Shlomo, he lets out a burp. Shlomo tries hard to ignore him, but he can't resist and burps back. The two burp themselves into giggles.

This burping contest appears in Promises, which chronicles the lives of seven Israeli and Palestinian children, ages nine to thirteen, living in and around Jerusalem. First-time filmmakers B.Z. Goldberg and Justine Shapiro, along with co-director and editor Carlos Bolado, shot the documentary between 1997 and 2000, in the comparatively peaceful period between the first and second intifadas.

More a drama than a documentary, Promises visits an ultra-orthodox Jewish school and a school where the Koran is taught as a manifesto for Palestinian liberation. It goes into homes in the Deheishe refugee camp and Beit-El, an Israeli settlement. In a world without checkpoints, these children would live in the same community, just a twenty-minute drive from each other. But as it is, they are a society apart. Their differing perspectives, and their interactions, give the film its poignancy.

B.Z. Goldberg, who narrates the film, worked as a television news sound man in the West Bank and Gaza during the first intifada. "I thought it would be interesting to make a film about children in the Middle East, not as victims of war as they were being portrayed, but as protagonists, to understand how the conflict informed their lives and how the quest for peace was shaping them," Goldberg tells me. "Everybody was talking about the kids--Rabin, Peres, Arafat, Clinton, and the Norwegians. Whenever anyone made a speech, they were talking about the children, but no one was actually talking to the children."

And the children have something to say, if not always diplomatically. That's one of the film's strengths. Moishe, a rightwing Jewish settler, hopes to become an army commander. He swears to "clear all the Arabs out of Jerusalem." Mahmoud, a blue-eyed boy from the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, says that the Jews can stay, but only as guests, when Al Quds (Jerusalem) is returned to his people.

Moishe asserts that the Arabs took his land: "God promised us the land of Israel. The Arabs came and took it!"

Mahmoud says...