When Israeli TV producers and Palestinian filmmakers accepted an American proposal last fall to create a joint version of “Sesame Street” fostering tolerance and mutual respect, the real barriers between the two communities loomed large.
Producing this series, whose main aim is to teach the alphabet, numbers and concepts to preschoolers, has become an exercise in conflict resolution.
After both sides had agreed on the obvious — that each would have a stage set for its own “street” and its own characters — they found themselves mired in endless discussions about the “middle area,” where Palestinian characters would meet their Israeli counterparts. Ironically, the middle area would not exist physically, since neither studio had room for another stage set, but would be a composite generated by film magic, joining the borders of the two sets.
“When we met, we said we would have a park at the edge of our set and they would have a park at the edge of theirs,” says Dolly Wolbrum of Educational Television, who heads the Israeli side of the project. “They asked whom the park belongs to. We said it doesn’t belong to anyone.”
At one point the Palestinians suggested that the middle area be divided by a physical wall that would have to be breached, drawing an “over-my-dead-body” response from Wolbrum.
“I said it was diametrically opposed to the philosophy of the program,” she said. “Our purpose is not to reflect reality, but to show a possibility for the future.”
But for Daoud Kuttab, executive producer on the Palestinian side, clear boundaries are important. “We thought even a symbolic wall was necessary to demarcate where our territory starts and where theirs begins.”
The Palestinians see themselves as walking a tightrope between building national identity and fostering neighborly relations. So the show’s relationship to reality is hardly a simple matter.
“If we don’t show reality, we lose credibility; we’re just dreamers. If we show the reality, it will be too violent, defeating the purpose we have set for ourselves,” Kuttab says. “We’re trying to find the middle ground.” That’s where the puppets come in handy, because “already you’re in some kind of dream world, so it’s OK to fantasize to a degree.”
It wasn’t enough to resolve where the characters from the two sets would interact. How they would meet also became a topic for debate.
“We didn’t believe it was appropriate to show Palestinian children and Israeli children playing as though nothing had happened,” says Dr. Cairo Arafat, an expert on early childhood development and one of the Palestinian team’s advisers.
The Palestinians nixed chance encounters on their street because this would undermine values they were trying teach: “a feeling of pride, that this [street] is the home territory and [that] those who come in are our guests,” Kuttab says.
But Wolbrum says she can’t imagine a first meeting that wouldn’t be by chance. After that, it will make sense to have planned meetings.
Political events seemed to conspire to derail the project. Writers felt unable to write about tolerance and conflict resolution, though Kuttab tried to reassure them, saying that now “we have an even bigger challenge to speak to Israeli society and to introduce our society and aspirations.”
For Wolbrum, “the project is more imperative than ever.”
Lewis Bernstein, a Hebrew-speaking American and veteran co-producer of Children’s Television Workshop in the United States, which originated and still produces “Sesame Street,” agrees.
“The only way you can build a better future is to look beyond the horrors of the day,” he says.
Kuttab feels the biggest problem for the series has been a very real wall: the prolonged closure of Israel’s borders to Palestinians. Two members of the animation team live in Gaza and didn’t receive permits to enter Israel. Other Palestinians were unable to reach Jerusalem for meetings.
Israeli youngsters have long been familiar with “Sesame Street.” In 1969, soon after Israel Television started operating, the American series aired here, dubbed into Hebrew.
After Bernstein left CTW to set up his own production company, CTW asked him to explore the idea of a joint Palestinian-Israeli version of the show. Co-productions are normally fairly simple projects: CTW organizes “curriculum seminars” that help local broadcasters develop the conceptual framework and the techniques to convey it. Half the material is selected from CTW’s library and dubbed, and half is produced locally.
But no previous co-production had involved two nations with a history of conflict. For a year and a half, Bernstein traveled through Gaza and the West Bank, speaking to educators about the idea. He got mixed responses.
Kuttab, who runs the independent Jerusalem Film Institute, knew the fledgling Palestinian television wouldn’t like it. “They wanted to establish their identity, and doing a joint project with Israel was not the best way,” he says.
He also doubted his own institute would participate, but the invaluable training opportunity for Palestinian animators was too good an offer to reject. After the animators joined the project under the aegis of the JFI, Kuttab said they wanted to be responsible for writing, filming and creating their own characters and street.
This, they hoped, would offset the basic assymetry of the $5.5 million production. Each side has a separate contract with CTW, but no formal contract with each other. But the fact that the Education Ministry is funding much of the budget, and that the Israeli team has far more experience, means that the majority of the locally produced items will be Israeli.
Each team has the last word on its own script and no veto power over the other’s. The two sides will exchange scripts, however.
“The message of `Sesame Street’ is that you can become who you want to be,” says Arafat.