More Than 1000 Words Page #2

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My bulletproof car

will be here soon,

but let's go talk to the soldiers.

You need a clearance first.

No. Check again,

we already have that.

"There are demonstrations in the

villages near the separation fence."

Are we going to get

through the checkpoint?

You don't have a clearance.

Please move back.

Can you check again?

The Army PR told me

that the clearance

will be waiting for me here.

Did you check?

Drive, don't be scared.

Ziv goes to the

heart of the inferno,

or goes with Tsvi to interview

the heads of terror groups...

I mean...

He goes there voluntarily.

I don't tell her everything.

Not because I don't want

to involve her, but because

I want to spare her the

things I encounter every day.

When I go out to the territories,

I tell her after, not before.

Most of the time she does

not even know I've been there.

When I leave Jenin, I'll say,

'I was in Jenin, I've left.

I'm OK and I'm

on my way home.'

It's not normal to

make news in this country.

I can understand

Americans or Europeans

who always photograph

someone else's war.

Ziv photographs

his own country's wars.

I'm in constant

search of a frame.

There's something

very Sisyphean about it.

And sometimes

it's very frustrating.

You run, drive,

search, leave and return.

And many times you

return without a frame.

I have a social and

political agenda

that guides me

through my work.

I'm trying to

convey messages.

I'm talking about something

very close to my heart.

It's important to

me to convey the messages.

It's very hard today

to find a genuine frame.

You know, I don't

shoot for propaganda.

I don't belong to anybody.

I don't go out

and shoot to satisfy

this or that paper's

particular interests.

I'm not a photographer

for the Israeli army,

or for the PLO, or for anyone.

I shoot for the truth

because there is a

truth that I want to tell,

and that's why

I go out to the field.

Good morning, kids.

How are you?

The Muassi are

a Palestinian Bedouin tribe

that sits in an

enclave within Gush Qatif.

The Gush Qatif Jewish

settlements surround their land.

The Muassi were never hostile

to the state of Israel,

and relations have always

been good and neighborly.

They make their living from

agriculture and fishing.

Then the Shirat Hayam

settlement was established,

and that closed off most

of the Muassi tribe's shore.

They were not allowed

to go out to sea with boats,

but they were allowed

to fish from the shore,

which obviously reduced

their catch to almost zero.

Until November 2000, all

of the shore in effect was theirs.

Then in that month there was

the "Children's Bus Bombing"

in which two Israeli

civilians were killed,

and the Cohen family's

three children were wounded.

All three

children lost their legs.

In response to this terror attack,

the settlement of Shirat Hayam

was established.

After every major

bombing in Gush Qatif,

the settlers responded by

establishing a new settlement.

Shirat Hayam

is a pretty surreal place.

They are sitting

on the seashore,

originally just 16 families,

who have to be

guarded by soldiers,

watch towers, fences,

barricades and patrols...

for only 16 families

that sit on the shore,

all surrounded by

a Palestinian community.

Understand, this is how the

children are brought to school.

Shirat Hayam is an enclave

in a Palestinian population,

which is an enclave in

the Gush Qatif settlement,

which again is an enclave

within the Gaza strip.

That's to say there's

a sequence of enclaves here

of Jews surrounded

by Palestinians

surrounded by Jews

surrounded by Palestinians.

I think the Shirat Hayam

Muassi relationship is a kind of

representative model of Israel

inside her Arab surroundings.

This was the commander of the

Al-Aqsa Martyrs in Nablus.

He's dead now.

Two weeks after

the suicide attack

in Tel Aviv's

Old Central Bus Station

with two simultaneous

suicide bombings,

we were sitting with him

and his fighters.

And they told us, they had

sent out their people

to carry out the suicide attacks.

I admit I froze

when I heard that.

Suddenly it was very concrete.

These were the people

who take responsibility

for tens, maybe hundreds of

deaths in the past few years.

And there I was

just two weeks later

sitting with the man that had

sent out the suicide bombers.

He looked them in the eyes,

put the explosive belts on them,

kissed them on the forehead

and said, "Go in peace,"

or perhaps...

"Go in war."

There are advantages

and disadvantages

to working as an Israeli.

The clear advantages

on the Israeli side are

that I speak the language

and understand

how things work.

It's my backyard.

I feel I'm creating

a mosaic out of fragments.

Building a vessel from

shards that eventually

could be used as

an archaeological record.

I usually come back

from a day of shooting

with three, four or

five hundred photos,

but that doesn't necessarily

mean I have a frame.

I'm happy if

I manage to produce

four or five

frames a year

that are good enough

for my portfolio.

It's too bad, apropos perfect.

In a perfect world or Photoshop,

Abu Mazen would

have played with his mustache,

and then it would

have been fantastic.

Here I expected Bibi to make the

same hand motion, but he didn't.

But suddenly he lifted his hand,

and it looks like Jabotinsky

is looking down

at him in disbelief.

To shoot just soldiers

is boring; we've seen it already.

But to bring both

together creates a dialogue

between the soldiers

and the kid with the rifle.

Recently, I shot a full day on a

nuclear submarine for this article.

I'm sitting on the bridge, and

suddenly I notice this dolphin

jumping in the

wake of the submarine,

and the submarine's name was

Dolphin. That was great.

In every good news photograph

there must be

an element of luck.

It doesn't happen very often.

And here, by the time the

Pope had sat down again,

this photo was already

on its way via the internet

to TIME Magazine.

In photography it's

"Access, Access, Access."

To get to the right

place and to be able

to get the frame

from the angle you want.

Sharon once visited a Picasso

exhibit at the Tel Aviv Museum.

He walked around,

got tired and sat down.

For a moment suddenly,

Sharon was alone.

It's a rare moment to catch

a Prime Minister alone.

It's almost impossible.

And Sharon sitting

among Picassos

also says something,

but we won't go into that.

There's a difference

between a news photo

in tomorrow morning's

paper and a frame with lasting

historical significance.

Rabin is an excellent example.

I shot him receiving an honorary

doctorate at Bar-Ilan University.

It was in '93 I think.

And...

It wasn't published

in the next day's paper.

But 2 years later,

after Rabin's assassination,

suddenly the paradox that Rabin

received an honorary degree

from the same university

that bred his killer

gave this photo

new significance.

You see Rabin speaking

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