Political Elegy
On Sven Augustijnen’s National Pride: From Jericho to Gaza
Nihal El Aasar
National Pride: From Jericho to Gaza
Director
SVEN AUGUSTIJNEN
Year
2025
Country BELGIUM
“What was taken by force can only be restored by force.” This is the response of Ayat Housheya—poet, teacher at Al Istiqlal University in Jericho, and daughter of a Palestinian prisoner—after a pause and some prompting from university staff. Palestinian diplomat Hassan Al Balawi, the main subject of National Pride: From Jericho to Gaza, has just asked Housheya’s opinion on armed struggle during the Palestinian revolution (the period of organized armed struggle and political activity led by the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] between 1967 and 1982). Housheya, here, is quoting former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s famous declaration after the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967, which justified Nasser’s choice to continue on the war path instead of negotiating a settlement.
It is November 2019, the fifteenth anniversary of Yasser Arafat, one of the PLO’s most prominent leaders; Belgian artist and filmmaker Sven Augustijnen follows Al Balawi’s return to his homeland in an episodic journey across Palestine from Jericho to Gaza’s borders, capturing several interviews in the process, including with Arafat’s adopted children; the mayor of Jericho Hassan Saleh; and with former Israeli MP, Yael Dayan. Al Balawi’s journey through the geography of occupied Palestine translates to a political elegy, seemingly organised around mourning—mourning for Arafat, of course, but also for Al Balawi’s father, Fathi Al Balawi, who was a co-founder of Fatah, one of the main organisations within the PLO. More subtly, the film mourns for the PLO’s vision itself, which has changed drastically from the organisation it formerly was, one that led the Palestinian revolution. The viewer can be moved by Al Balawi’s genuine fidelity to that project and his attempt to hold on to it, which Augusstijnen captures with respect. Meanwhile, the reality of what he encounters on his journey, and the knowledge that we have now in the aftermath of October 7th, show that the film has captured the twilight of that particular reality.
National Pride: From Jericho to Gaza is a portrait of an interregnum. It opens a particular window of the Palestinian liberation struggle, while coincidentally documenting the fissures in a political order that would rupture in 2023. The film’s geography, represented in its title, traces a corridor that had been carved by the Oslo Accords of 1993, which are both mentioned in the film, and cast a shadow over its events. The accords—which Arafat had signed after Egypt laid the groundwork by signing the still unpopular Camp David Accords in 1978—had promised a transitional framework leading to imminent Palestinian statehood. But, as history has made abundantly clear, the dividends of that peace never came. The film references this in Al Balawi’s interview with Hassan Saleh, the mayor of Jericho, who recounts that Arafat was more upset with the Arab leaders than he was with the U.S., as he felt they had abandoned Palestine and backed him into a corner.
By 2019, twenty-six years had passed, and Israeli settlements had more than doubled. The Palestinian Authority, created in Oslo as the governing body and official representative for the Palestinian people, had arguably been calcified into a bureaucratic body that functions, more or less, as an administrator for Israeli security to quell Palestinian resistance. The generation of Palestinians conceived in the wake of the Oslo Accord’s promises came of age only to witness its failures. Disillusioned, they came to the conclusion that the two-state solution was feasibly impossible. Balawi’s journey itself traces the corridor that Oslo carved, and the fragments that it has left behind: checkpoints, Area A, Area B, Area C, and the banality of the suffocation of daily Palestinian life.
A revealing moment in Augustijnen's film comes during a conversation with Yael Dayan, the daughter of former Israeli general and Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan. Dayan is presented as a voice on the “Israeli left”, yet suggestively repeats the usual right-wing Israeli talking points, which use Hamas as a bogeyman for Palestine’s failure to achieve statehood. Palestinians are disparaged as a disunited front, and Israel, as a victim, rather than the belligerent party. The liberal Zionist position that Dayan articulates is not simply a demonstration of a confused ideology; rather, it is a manifestation of the framework that Oslo has produced and shows the bind that Palestinians have remained trapped in—that any semblance of “peace” can only come if Palestinians produce the right kind of leadership, are united under one party, and practice the ‘right’ kind of politics. The end of colonisation and occupation is always conditional on Palestinian behaviour, always imminent and never realised.
Of course, the viewer witnesses all of this with the shadow of what is to come in their mind. The lack of Palestinian unity that Dayan foregrounds as the reason Palestinians have failed to attain rights will prove incorrect. The unity intifada of 2021 saw Palestinians uniting across the West Bank, Gaza and the diaspora, in response to Israel’s attempt at seizing the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in Jerusalem. Moreover, October 7th and the ensuing genocidal campaign on Gaza would radically shift the parameters, not only the Palestine that we see captured in this film, but of the global order that existed previously, shattering the terminal exhaustion of that order, and ushering in a newer phase of the struggle. Despite the massive death toll and the cruelty of the carnage of the last few years, we must remember that some joyous images persist. I am thinking here specifically of the release of Palestinian prisoners, who came from all factions and Palestinian political parties. Those images proved that despite different political affiliations, and despite allegations of fragmentation, Palestinian resistance efforts remain united in seeking liberation—and return.
Nihal El Aasar is an Egyptian writer, researcher, political analyst. She has written about politics, political economy, culture, and literature in several publications including The Baffler, Sidecar, Verso, Jacobin, Parapraxis, ArtReview, The Wire, Mundial, Protean Magazine, GQ and other publications.
This text was commissioned by Open City Documentary Festival to accompany the screening of National Pride: From Jericho to Gaza at BerthaDocHouse, 17 April 2026.
It is November 2019, the fifteenth anniversary of Yasser Arafat, one of the PLO’s most prominent leaders; Belgian artist and filmmaker Sven Augustijnen follows Al Balawi’s return to his homeland in an episodic journey across Palestine from Jericho to Gaza’s borders, capturing several interviews in the process, including with Arafat’s adopted children; the mayor of Jericho Hassan Saleh; and with former Israeli MP, Yael Dayan. Al Balawi’s journey through the geography of occupied Palestine translates to a political elegy, seemingly organised around mourning—mourning for Arafat, of course, but also for Al Balawi’s father, Fathi Al Balawi, who was a co-founder of Fatah, one of the main organisations within the PLO. More subtly, the film mourns for the PLO’s vision itself, which has changed drastically from the organisation it formerly was, one that led the Palestinian revolution. The viewer can be moved by Al Balawi’s genuine fidelity to that project and his attempt to hold on to it, which Augusstijnen captures with respect. Meanwhile, the reality of what he encounters on his journey, and the knowledge that we have now in the aftermath of October 7th, show that the film has captured the twilight of that particular reality.
National Pride: From Jericho to Gaza is a portrait of an interregnum. It opens a particular window of the Palestinian liberation struggle, while coincidentally documenting the fissures in a political order that would rupture in 2023. The film’s geography, represented in its title, traces a corridor that had been carved by the Oslo Accords of 1993, which are both mentioned in the film, and cast a shadow over its events. The accords—which Arafat had signed after Egypt laid the groundwork by signing the still unpopular Camp David Accords in 1978—had promised a transitional framework leading to imminent Palestinian statehood. But, as history has made abundantly clear, the dividends of that peace never came. The film references this in Al Balawi’s interview with Hassan Saleh, the mayor of Jericho, who recounts that Arafat was more upset with the Arab leaders than he was with the U.S., as he felt they had abandoned Palestine and backed him into a corner.
By 2019, twenty-six years had passed, and Israeli settlements had more than doubled. The Palestinian Authority, created in Oslo as the governing body and official representative for the Palestinian people, had arguably been calcified into a bureaucratic body that functions, more or less, as an administrator for Israeli security to quell Palestinian resistance. The generation of Palestinians conceived in the wake of the Oslo Accord’s promises came of age only to witness its failures. Disillusioned, they came to the conclusion that the two-state solution was feasibly impossible. Balawi’s journey itself traces the corridor that Oslo carved, and the fragments that it has left behind: checkpoints, Area A, Area B, Area C, and the banality of the suffocation of daily Palestinian life.
A revealing moment in Augustijnen's film comes during a conversation with Yael Dayan, the daughter of former Israeli general and Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan. Dayan is presented as a voice on the “Israeli left”, yet suggestively repeats the usual right-wing Israeli talking points, which use Hamas as a bogeyman for Palestine’s failure to achieve statehood. Palestinians are disparaged as a disunited front, and Israel, as a victim, rather than the belligerent party. The liberal Zionist position that Dayan articulates is not simply a demonstration of a confused ideology; rather, it is a manifestation of the framework that Oslo has produced and shows the bind that Palestinians have remained trapped in—that any semblance of “peace” can only come if Palestinians produce the right kind of leadership, are united under one party, and practice the ‘right’ kind of politics. The end of colonisation and occupation is always conditional on Palestinian behaviour, always imminent and never realised.
Of course, the viewer witnesses all of this with the shadow of what is to come in their mind. The lack of Palestinian unity that Dayan foregrounds as the reason Palestinians have failed to attain rights will prove incorrect. The unity intifada of 2021 saw Palestinians uniting across the West Bank, Gaza and the diaspora, in response to Israel’s attempt at seizing the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in Jerusalem. Moreover, October 7th and the ensuing genocidal campaign on Gaza would radically shift the parameters, not only the Palestine that we see captured in this film, but of the global order that existed previously, shattering the terminal exhaustion of that order, and ushering in a newer phase of the struggle. Despite the massive death toll and the cruelty of the carnage of the last few years, we must remember that some joyous images persist. I am thinking here specifically of the release of Palestinian prisoners, who came from all factions and Palestinian political parties. Those images proved that despite different political affiliations, and despite allegations of fragmentation, Palestinian resistance efforts remain united in seeking liberation—and return.
Nihal El Aasar is an Egyptian writer, researcher, political analyst. She has written about politics, political economy, culture, and literature in several publications including The Baffler, Sidecar, Verso, Jacobin, Parapraxis, ArtReview, The Wire, Mundial, Protean Magazine, GQ and other publications.
This text was commissioned by Open City Documentary Festival to accompany the screening of National Pride: From Jericho to Gaza at BerthaDocHouse, 17 April 2026.