In a region of land that has been hotly contested for millennia, MIKHAI’EL SOFER, an American Jewish immigrant serving in the Israeli Defense Forces and Leila Shaaban, a Palestinian Muslim and university student , find in one another a peace and purpose, that brings them together, Their coming together is by chance but their choice to be together requires them to leave their “Common Ground”. But even in America, the conflict will not leave them alone but seeps into their lives as they never suspected it would to rob them of their only son.
In an effort to fight his own battle for survival, Mikhai’el returns to Israel to work as a defense lawyer for Palestinians. Leila reluctantly joins him inspite of the horrors she herself suffered in the past on that rocky ground. For a while they are able to make their personal treaty work as he fights for the non-existent rights of the Palestinian and she raises their family. It is only when she begins teaching Palestinian children in a poor village that she finds she cannot muzzle her outrage at the dubious justice of a political system for which her husband works, that subjugates the liberties of a people that belong to the land every bit as much as Mihai’el’s people do. Slowly and at first, just barely visible fissures begin to appear in their relationship and they are both reluctant to acknowledge, the stranger in their house.
When Mikhai’el takes a job within a political arm of Jerusalem City government he must walk a thin line between his kind and hers. Leila discovers that she cannot travel contentedly with him but must cross over to her side. Involved in disobeying a curfew and keeping the school open , she is arrested and sent to a detention center in Jerusalem. In despair Mikhai’el knows only one way to get her out; he calls in a favor that absolutely terminates any influence he may have had in local government marking the end of his future and purpose in Israel.
But he doesn’t hesitate, and he ultimately realizes that the source of the contention that played chess with the pieces of their lives is not about the land. The answer is not in this Common Ground that they try to occupy at the same moment, but rather, is within the people who are born of that land.
These are those tenuous years when Israelis and Palestinians toy with peace and concessions and totter on the brink of annihilation. These are the years of teasing whisperings of solutions and peace conferences, of Jewish settlements built in occupied territories, before the wall built around the West Bank. These are the years of café and bus bombings which remind people that the nettles still prickle and that little has been solved. But within these years, at least one Jew and one Muslim miraculously find an answer; find peace on their “Common Ground.”
In an effort to fight his own battle for survival, Mikhai’el returns to Israel to work as a defense lawyer for Palestinians. Leila reluctantly joins him inspite of the horrors she herself suffered in the past on that rocky ground. For a while they are able to make their personal treaty work as he fights for the non-existent rights of the Palestinian and she raises their family. It is only when she begins teaching Palestinian children in a poor village that she finds she cannot muzzle her outrage at the dubious justice of a political system for which her husband works, that subjugates the liberties of a people that belong to the land every bit as much as Mihai’el’s people do. Slowly and at first, just barely visible fissures begin to appear in their relationship and they are both reluctant to acknowledge, the stranger in their house.
When Mikhai’el takes a job within a political arm of Jerusalem City government he must walk a thin line between his kind and hers. Leila discovers that she cannot travel contentedly with him but must cross over to her side. Involved in disobeying a curfew and keeping the school open , she is arrested and sent to a detention center in Jerusalem. In despair Mikhai’el knows only one way to get her out; he calls in a favor that absolutely terminates any influence he may have had in local government marking the end of his future and purpose in Israel.
But he doesn’t hesitate, and he ultimately realizes that the source of the contention that played chess with the pieces of their lives is not about the land. The answer is not in this Common Ground that they try to occupy at the same moment, but rather, is within the people who are born of that land.
These are those tenuous years when Israelis and Palestinians toy with peace and concessions and totter on the brink of annihilation. These are the years of teasing whisperings of solutions and peace conferences, of Jewish settlements built in occupied territories, before the wall built around the West Bank. These are the years of café and bus bombings which remind people that the nettles still prickle and that little has been solved. But within these years, at least one Jew and one Muslim miraculously find an answer; find peace on their “Common Ground.”
