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(BBC Arabic Title Music)
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(Snap, Click, Explosion)
We go behind the scenes of Fauda
to find out why this Israeli TV thriller
has been such a hit in Arab countries.
How real is it in showing the world of Israeli Special Forces
and Palestinian militants?
(Energetic Rock Music)
Can a drama help bring real life enemies together?
In the Negev desert,
they're shooting the new season of the television series Fauda.
(Car pulling up)
Doron, the Israeli undercover soldier, is back,
tackling Palestinian militants during the second intifada.
Two Israeli friends created the drama.
Lior Raz, the actor who plays Doron,
and journalist Avi Issacharoff.
They served together in the Israeli army.
It's like two people speaking in the same language
that other people don't understand
because of the background,
because of the places we spent together...
I didn't talk about my experiences in the army
for 20 years until I met Avi again.
We started to talk about it again and again and again,
and then immediately it was a good story.
He knew that I was a journalist,
an analyst for Middle East issues,
that I'm spending so much time on the Palestinian side,
so we wanted to bring the complexity of this conflict.
Not only the undercover units and what they do,
but also 'how does it look like on the other side,
on the Palestinian side?'
We want to show how they live,
what they are experiencing in life,
and what price they are paying for their actions.
And we actually, I think for the Israeli audience,
we opened a window to them to see how people live over there.
Fauda is made by an Israeli production company.
It's been a smash hit in Israel.
But millions more people have watched it in the Arab world
and the West since it aired on Netflix.
Rotem Shamir's directing the second series
and the pressure is on to repeat that success.
The show is supposed to feel as real as possible,
but on the other hand it's a very dramatic show
so we keep trying to bring in cinematic elements;
there's a little bit of a western going on here.
(Western-style guitar)
The key Palestinian female character is back again.
She's played by Laetitia Edo, a French Lebanese actress.
I relate to Shirin.
I like who she is in this society, because she's a doctor
She's the hope of this whole story.
Season 2 is much more intense than Season 1,
for my character and for all the other ones.
Hard things are coming in this season.
Series Two of Fauda continues the deadly cat and mouse game
between Israelis posing as Arabs
and the Palestinians they're trying to capture.
But what we also see is the families who suffer.
And the moral dilemmas of the occupation – on both sides.
(Intense thriller music)
Fauda is based on these real Israeli special forces
– the so-called mista'arvim.
It means those who disguise themselves as Arabs
(Explosion)
They operate covertly on the West Bank,
infiltrating Palestinian communities,
snatching wanted men.
These units have never been filmed before –
but we've had exclusive access to them
as Fauda's thrown a spotlight on their secret world.
Fauda also shows real life
in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank.
Refugee camps here are still home
to armed Palestinian militants like these men.
They carry out attacks on Israelis
and try to outwit the undercover units hunting them down.
We are covered up not because we are afraid,
but because we are fighting and resisting for our cause -
our homeland to be liberated from the occupation.
Everyone knows the mista'arvim
They are a Special Forces Unit.
They can do whatever they want – jump up and down –
they're still nothing to us.
I watched Fauda…in this trivial series,
Israel showed a lot of the Palestinian side,
not because they love the Palestinians,
but to weaken them and terrorise them.
(Gun being loaded)
(Dialogue in Arabic)
In Fauda for the first time Israeli audiences saw
a Hamas militant as one of the principal characters.
Abu Ahmad was portrayed not only as a terrorist,
but as someone whose family was destroyed
by the violence of the occupation.
Israeli-Arab actor Hisham Suliman
has become famous for playing Abu Ahmad –
in some unexpected places.
(music)
The Israeli actor, Lior Raz, who plays Doron,
was himself a soldier in an undercover Israeli army unit.
In Fauda he didn't want stereotyped characters –
Israelis as 'good guys' and Palestinians as 'bad guys'.
I remember that I came to the writers room and I said,
“Listen I want to be able and to want to play
each role in this series
and in order to do that,
it's supposed to be a rounded character.
Even if it is that evil terrorist,
he's got to love his wife and you have to show it
and he has kids and you have to show it.
And also the good guys.
They're doing bad stuff, bad things sometimes.”
In playing Doron,
Lior confronted his own military experiences -
and exorcised some personal ghosts.
When you are in a war zone, it doesn't matter where,
I think you have some kind of PTSD, post traumatic disorder,
and for me the writing process and er, the acting as well,
actually it was a healing process.
I couldn't sit with my back to the door ever.
Now I can and I don't care.
And I think it's, it was one of the best,
intense therapy that you can ever ask.
One of the most shocking events in Fauda
is based on something that actually happened
when Lior was on army service.
I had a girlfriend; her name was Iris Azulai
and she went out from her home in Baka, in Jerusalem,
and terrorists came and attacked her and stabbed her to death,
and for me it was I think the hardest thing
that ever happened to me,
mentally and, and, and physically it was so hard.
And when I met with Avi he knew her as well so he said,
“Let's, let's write that stuff about Iris,”
and I said, “I don't want to touch it, I don't want to –
it's something that I never talk about so,”
More than 200 Israelis died in over 40 Hamas suicide attacks
during the Second Intifada.
(Dialogue in Arabic)
In Fauda, a young Palestinian wife becomes a bomber
when her husband is killed by the undercover unit.
She goes into a bar in Tel Aviv.
An Israeli girl is working there.
Her boyfriend's in the army.
Avi convinced me, and we actually wrote a part
for a woman who's dying in a, in a suicide bomb
and how it affects her boyfriend
who was serving in the army at the same time.
And the text that they had in the show
was the text that we had in our life.
(Explosion, screaming, car alarm)
On the West Bank real Palestinian militants
provided the template for Fauda characters.
Hebron is considered to be a stronghold of Hamas.
It's considered to be the most religious city in the West Bank.
Avi's driving into the heartland of Hamas on the West Bank.
The Islamist group is Israel's sworn enemy.
Hebron is a tough city, it's really tough.
There's a checkpoint at the northern entrance of the city –
its not actually a checkpoint but a PA thing
Avi speaks fluent Arabic, but as an Israeli journalist
he takes a risk every time he comes onto the West Bank.
I've been attacked once upon a time,
three, three years and a bit ago.
A group of masked men tried to lynch me
and just because I was an Israeli.
But, being honest, I don't feel any kind of a threat usually.
They got to know me, they got to trust me...
Yes, Hamas officials trust an Israeli journalist,
talk to him off the record, on the record...
Since Fauda Avi's become even more well known here.
I know that even Hamas officials in Gaza are watching the show.
They wrote about the show. Yes, they criticise the show.
Hamas' website criticised the show,
said it's a Zionist propaganda.
Blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda,
and at the end of the article put a link
to the first episode of Fauda.
I understand that I'm an Israeli, I'm a Jew,
of course the narrative would be more Israeli,
but it's so far from being propaganda. Not even close.
Today Avi's on assignment,
reporting for an Israeli radio station.
Avi based Fauda's Arab characters on his experiences
in the occupied Palestinian areas
during the Second Intifada.
And when we came with the idea of Fauda,
which is in Arabic, you know, it's an Arabic word for chaos,
it presents the chaos that was here
in the Palestinian territories
during the years of 2000 and 2007.
And Palestinians who were living here
know better than I what Fauda means.
The undercover units that they used to tell
'Fauda, Fauda, Fauda' when something went wrong.
(Car driving, people shouting)
In Fauda, the undercover Israeli unit
disguised as waiters at a wedding party on the West Bank,
try to trap Abu Ahmed.
Doron chases him through the streets...
but he gets away – again.
That's why they call him 'The Panther'.
There's a real life Panther,
well known in the refugee camps of Jenin.
(Casual dialogue in Arabic)
Zakaria Zubeidi was the commander
of a unit of the Al Aqsa Brigades
during the second intifada,
He was paying his condolences at a funeral tent one evening
when a van drew up and the mista'arvim jumped out.
Zakaria began to fight the Israeli occupation
when he was just a boy.
Zakaria became a bomb maker.
His face was scarred by an explosion.
He was wanted for suicide attacks
that killed dozens of Israeli civilians.
The undercover units set out to get him.
Today Zakaria says he's a full time father.
No longer a fighter, he looks after the welfare
of Palestinian prisoners –
there are still 6,000 in Israeli jails.
(music)
Zakaria hadn't seen Fauda but he agreed to take a look.
The Israeli border police have a mista'arvim unit -
it's called Yamas.
They're training to make an arrest
deep in Palestinian territory.
First, undercover soldiers,
looking and sounding like local Arabs, identify the target.
The undercover soldiers make their arrest,
but they've been rumbled
(Shooting)
They're now the target, and once they're exposed,
the back up squad shows up with covering fire.
(Gunfire)
But what about the Palestinian militants' claim
that the mista'arvim are just cold blooded killers?
(Gunfire)
(Music)
Fauda isn't all about guns and action –
it's about the moral dilemmas too,
on both sides of this bloody conflict.
(Director giving instructions)
Laetitia, who plays Dr Shirin,
is on set in an Israeli hospital,
made to look as if it's on the West Bank.
Shirin's an unusual lead character:
a strong, independent Arab woman.
I was very happy first that this Palestinian woman
has this high level in the hospital.
It's important, I think, because it exists and it has to be shown
and Shirin is a character who really loves her job
and she really tries to help people.
In this season she is suffering much more,
and people when they read the script, they say
'Oh my God, I was crying reading the script!'
In the first season of Fauda,
the Palestinian doctor was used by militants in her family.
As a doctor she is asked to help the head of Hamas.
She doesn't want to get involved in these political things,
this mess, but she is helping a man who is wounded.
As a doctor, Shirin faces a moral crisis
after she is forced to plant a bomb
inside a wounded Israel undercover soldier.
I know the political situation here,
and I really asked them many times before,
when I went through the audition process,
'Is it going to be balanced?'
Both of the sides are bad and good,
so this is why a lot of people on both sides are saying that
for first time I have compassion for these people.
So this for me is small, but still a victory.
She doesn't like Hamas. She doesn't care about the Israelis.
She doesn't like the conflict,
but she finds herself dragged into this conflict,
and what's so beautiful about her is that, for us,
she's the representative of the innocent,
of the people that are not into killing other people,
are not into the conflict,
who just want to live their life.
And this is what's so sad about this character.
(Music)
It isn't just in Fauda that Palestinian hospitals
have been the scene of an Israeli undercover operations.
Just outside Nablus two years ago,
Hamas killed two Israeli settlers.
Eitam and Nama Henkin were shot in their car –
while their children watched from the back seat.
Rana Rezeq's son Karam Al Masri was one of the Hamas cell.
In the hospital in Nablus that night,
Karam's uncle, Ashraf Al Masri, was visiting his nephew
as the hospital CCTV captured a live mista'arvim operation.
(Doors opening)
In the first series of Fauda the plot was eerily similar.
Abu Ahmed had been taken to hospital
after being shot by Doron.
But before the undercover team could get to him,
he was spirited away with the help of Dr Shirin.
Karam's family thought he'd be safe from the Israelis
in the hospital.
It was the experiences of these Palestinian mothers like Rana
that the creators of Fauda wanted to put on the screen
What we did is think: 'What would a Palestinian woman say?'
Think about what goes on in the mind of a mother
who knows that her son is a terrorist,
or considered to be a terrorist.
Down in her heart, deep, deep in her heart,
I think that that mother is really crying
when she is losing her son.
(Music)
The Palestinian scenes in Fauda aren't filmed on the West Bank,
but in Israeli Arab cities.
Kfar Qasem, north of Tel Aviv, has been turned into a film set.
Some of the locals have even been roped in as extras.
Rotem's directing a big cast and crew –
a mixture of Arabs and Jews
We work very well together, we have a lot of fun,
we laugh all the time.
When you get home you understand
that you are in somewhat of a bubble,
that this is not necessarily how things really are,
but for us to experience things in such a positive way
is very unique and enjoyable, I guess.
We film a lot of the show in Arab cities
and we have rarely run into any situation
where we felt unwelcome, or anything like that.
We haven't got to the part of the show yet
where we blow things up;
we're gonna get to that…
so you'll have to ask me again in a couple of months!
Modesty forbids local Arab women acting as extras.
So the Israeli production company
have dressed up some of their own staff.
(Music)
Not all Israeli-Arabs who work in the film business
are happy with Fauda and the world it presents.
Salwa Nakkara, a well-known Israeli-Arab actress,
was offered a role in the first series of Fauda.
Salwa turned down the part in Fauda
and posted her reasons on Facebook.
(Hisham rehearsing dialogue)
In Nazareth, Hisham is rehearsing a new play
in his Arabic speaking theatre.
It's about three Palestinian brothers –
one is a collaborator with the Israelis.
Hisham knew his decision as an Arab to play Abu Ahmed,
the Palestinian militant in Fauda, would be controversial.
Hisham's character, Abu Ahmed,
was killed off in the first series of Fauda.
But he'll always remember his catchphrase.
(Gunshot)
Walid, the young Hamas commander,
is a bigger fish in the new series of Fauda.
The set's now an Israeli interrogation centre.
It's intense for Israeli-Arab actor Shadi Mari,
who plays Walid.
Maybe we should add a small "Walid?" to it,
meaning 'Who's this?'
(Director calling for quiet)
Unusually for an international drama series,
Fauda is recorded in Arabic and in Hebrew,
and shown with subtitles.
I speak fluent Arabic
but this is after 17 years in the field as a journalist.
Lior spoke less Arabic, but he's improving more and more.
I would speak in Arabic to the Arab guys,
but from time to time they would answer in Arabic,
from time to time in Hebrew,
so it's kind of a multi-language crew and TV show.
My father came from Iraq, my mother from Algeria,
and he speaks fluent Arabic.
Actually my father and me, we consider ourselves Arab Jews.
In this show in the next season,
we actually wrote a new part of my character's father
based on my real father.
In the script we have to speak in Arabic between ourselves.
For us it's very important that when they speak in Arabic,
it will be good Arabic with a good accent.
At the beginning of the scene,
it's the fact that when you see him, you say
'Don't leave me here with him alone', OK?
Who really speaks which language is sometimes surprising.
Dana, the Israeli who acts the interrogator,
has to question Shirin in Arabic.
Dana doesn't speak it – but neither does Laetitia.
I don't read Hebrew, I don't read Arabic...
Yeah, but I couldn't read a script in Hebrew,
so I don't know anything,
I don't know what's happening in the script, just my lines.
It's crazy, I agree!
Hi!
Laetitia depends on her Arabic teacher for every word.
You met Abed my amazing dialogue coach?
I was born and raised in France, so I am French.
But my mum, she was born in Lebanon,
so she speaks Lebanese Arabic,
which is very close to Palestinian.
So I just know some words.
And Abed has the text in Arabic and Hebrew,
and then he says it and records it for me,
and then when all the script is recorded, my parts,
I listen to it for hours until I write exactly what I hear.
(Meirav practising Arabic pronunciation with Abed)
When Netflix got in, it became a huge success in Arab countries,
so yes, I got many emails from Iran, from Lebanon, from Kuwait,
from all over the Arab world and many people write to me.
I think two reasons that people in the Arab world love it:
first of all the language – because we honour the language,
and the second is that we show them as they are.
(Music)
Lior's come to the gym to train with Nimrod Astel –
a martial arts expert from the same mista'arvim unit.
Nimrod is my best buddy from the army.
We used to serve together in Special forces in Israel.
When we started to shoot Fauda, I thought things will be real.
When you go to stunt co-ordinators,
most of the time if you have to hit someone
it's going to be like this, and then again and again and again,
but in our unit if you don't do it in 2 seconds you are dead.
We have an action scene on Sunday.
I have to disarm and kill a few people.
Nimrod is going to help me to manoeuvre
and to see how we do it smoothly and professionally.
In Fauda we don't have professional stunts –
all the stunts are people from out unit
and it's all real – they are all from the field.
It's Sunday on the set and they're shooting the gun battle.
Ronalee Shimon plays Nurit,
the only woman mista'arvim in the Israeli unit.
She's pumping herself up before an intense action sequence
where she infiltrates a Palestinian area
Coming from a ballet dancing background,
I don't think I've ever imagined myself running around with guns
and shooting people.
I think the rawness of how it's done makes it feel so real.
The way the show goes about the conflict is what makes it...
people just love it.
(Gunshots and intense music)
Fauda may be raw,
but do the shoot-outs and the fast paced action
glamourise the Israeli occupation?
Do you think that Narcos is glorifying
the drugs addiction in the US? No.
Do you think that Sopranos glorified the mafia? No.
I think it tells a story. I'm not a Palestinian.
If I was a Palestinian,
probably the story would be a different story,
but I'm an Israeli with an open mind.
I'm open minded, and I want to show people from all places,
and all kind of situations
but the narrative, it's an Israeli narrative.
It's a Zionist narrative. I'm Zionist and Israeli,
so I cannot run away from this.
(Gun firing)
On the shooting range,
the real mista'arvim of the Israeli border police
are preparing for their next mission.
Here today we're working on our shooting capabilities
just to make sure that we are always ready and prepared
for any sort of situation that might catch us
at any point in time
(Gunshot)
Yamas snipers are considered amongst the best in the world.
Their job is to cover members of their unit
who go into Palestinian areas disguised as Arabs.
This is a video of an actual operation.
(Gunfire)
(Music)
For some Israeli soldiers,
the reality of the conflict is not what Fauda shows.
Achiya Schatz is a member of Breaking the Silence –
former Israeli soldiers speaking out against the occupation.
He's leading a tour of Hebron,
where his unit carried out many operations.
Achiya was a soldier in the Duvdevan –
the most elite Israeli undercover army unit.
Duvdevan means cherry in Hebrew.
In a way, we've been told that it's
the cherry on the top of the cake.
In a way, this is how you feel.
You feel that you are in this elite unit
that goes on special mission.
But Achiya came to believe
the operations of the undercover unit
were the most immoral aspect of the Israeli occupation.
The thought that you can't trust someone that's next to you,
the people that are walking in the street,
the fact that we create this fear
in the heart of millions of people,
millions of Palestinians, is horrible.
And the fact that I was part of it
is one of the reasons I broke my silence.
The new series of Fauda is about to air in Israel,
but Avi's already thinking about the plot for a third season.
There's still plenty of material.
The bloodshed's continued
since the Second Intifada cost the lives of 1000 Israelis
and 4000 Palestinians.
People just wanna live their life,
people don't wanna hear about the conflict.
People had enough of talking about
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
They had the Second Intifada.
It's a huge scar in the hearts of everyone.
Both sides, by the way.
Then again, Palestinians and Israelis do not believe any more
in peace with the other side
because of what happened in the Second Intifada.
I don't see the end of the conflict coming soon.
When I was bit younger and maybe more naïve
I thought that we might need to change the leadership
in order to get to a peace agreement.
Now I think we need to change the people.
And I think the two people deserve each other, in a way.
(Upbeat, cheerful music)
(Children laughing)
Hisham is out with his children by the beach at the weekend.
He's a celebrity in Israel –
thanks to playing the Palestinian militant Abu Ahmed
Oh my God!
(Music)
The shoot is over.
But before Laetitia leaves Israel,
she wants to see the real West Bank.
She's come to Bethlehem,
where the Wall, the separation barrier,
keeps Israelis and Palestinians apart.
Playing Shirin I received a lot of insights,
experience, life experiences,
and people shared with me a lot of things about the conflict
I will miss my character, I will miss her –
I will miss her because I just put some of my heart in her.
(Car beeping)
You look really Palestinian.
I know we are not gonna change the world in a show.
This is something that I, I'm happy to be part of
and I'm not naïve,
I'm not waiting for the show to change the world,
but what it does already it's something.
I think Fauda's legacy could be...
if it could teach the young generations
that vengeance is endless and is not the solution.
Even if you suffered before, and I know from my own family
that it's hard in Lebanon,
and the wounds with Israel – it's endless.
But who will win in the end is the one who will say:
'OK, let's stop it here.'
(Music)
Lior's having a farewell drink with his friend Nimrod.
He's off to Hollywood for his next film role –
he's a big international star now.
Lior wants to capitalise on Fauda's success
to create new shows about other conflicts in the world.
But he knows a TV series can't replace a political solution.
I really hope that we could have two countries,
separated countries for the Palestinians and the Israelis.
I think we have to have peace with each other
because it's not taking us anywhere, and the war is bad.
This is what we wanted to show.
I don't want my kids to be in a war with the Palestinians.
Is that the guy from Fauda? Are you filming this?
I think that we should be optimistic.
We should work and do everything to have peace
with the Palestinians
and I'm waiting for the people over there
to say the same thing.
(Music, sound of waves)