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George she will never leave him, and it is her sheer determination that keeps the romance alive. Now the meetings are all in Arab Jaffa. But they are constantly interrupted by her brother, Shraga, known for his fanaticism and hot-headedness. He batters Miriam badly but leaves the couple alone. However, the Stern Gang hooligans finally find a pretext to move against Miriam and George: they both witnessed the killing of the British officer in the club and therefore have to be eliminated. The gang builds a case against them,which includes the allegation that Miriam assisted George to plan the attack on their headquarters in Tel Aviv. While Miriam awaits George for a final meeting in Palestine, after which they plan to leave the country for good, the Stern Gang executes her.
    As mentioned, the template in post-Zionist movies about love affairs between Arabs and Jews ends in tragedy, specifically death. The futility of such a death and the predictability of such an ending are beautifully shown in a scene in which a Palestinian shepherd takes a picture of the two and gives it to Miriam’s brother, who fails to develop them and then has to create a photomontage in order to show the two together. This is the essence of the romantic relationship: artificial, liminal, and in reality impossible. Even the only seemingly feasible solution for such an impossible love – running away abroad – cannot materialise.
    But beyond the overtly tragic message of the film, there are hidden ones as well, which turn this film into the only one I know of in which the Palestinian narrative of 1948 is not merely respected but also accepted as accurate. By itself, the execution of a Jewish woman by Jews challenges the conventional image of the bloodthirsty and inhuman Arab. Moreover, and probably even unintentionally, the movie went further than most in its historiographical view: it presents Palestinian viewpoints on 1948 as rational and deserving of empathy. The most illuminating scene in this respect is one set in November 1947, in which the patrons in an Arab coffeehouse listen anxiously to the wireless as it broadcasts the UN voting process on the partition resolution. This is the first and only time in an Israeli movie that the scriptwriter demonstrates an awareness of the fears experienced by the other side, which are diametrically opposed to those of the Jewish side. A scene of Jews listening anxiously, anticipating the opposite result of the vote, has appeared often in documentary as well as feature films since 1948, and it is followed by ecstatic dancing in the streets.
    Another striking aspect of the narrative is how it is positioned with respect to the explanation for the war’s eruption. In the classic Zionist narrative, as mentioned earlier in the context of the film Dan and Sa’adia , the war breaks out for some unexplainable reason whenthe Arabs, out of the blue, decide to attack. Here it breaks out after the Arab governments lose the vote in the United Nations and David Ben-Gurion declares the Jewish state. By taking these events into account, the connection between the fury felt by the Palestinians and their frustration and consequent assault on Jewish convoys and settlements becomes clearer. This connection is explained in dialogue by one of George’s friends in a scene that takes place in a pool hall in Jaffa. He speaks about UNSCOP (the UN Special Committee on Palestine, appointed in the spring of 1947 to propose a solution for the conflict in Palestine) and the fact that it permitted Jewish immigrants to flood Palestine while it discussed the country’s future. It was clear that these new immigrants would be staying put, regardless of what the UN ended up proposing. ‘And now the Arabs will stay defenceless, after the British leave, when they face these immigrants’, says George’s friend. This narration reflects not only the Palestinian narrative of the war, but also some of the claims made by the new Israeli historiography