Curfew on Sesame Street

Karim, Hanin and Battuta are characters in a new series of Sesame Street that has been adapted for Palestinian and Israeli children. Peter Schäfer described the production difficulties in the Swiss daily NZZ.

Karim, Hanin and Battuta are characters in a new series of Sesame Street that has been adapted for Palestinian and Israeli children. Peter Schäfer described the production difficulties in the Swiss daily newspaper Neue Züricher Zeitung (NZZ).

Palestinian television stations have neither the money to produce their own children’s programmes nor - at least it would appear so at times - the necessary awareness of what their youngest viewers really need. Thanks to support from America, Palestinians are now working together with their Israeli and Jordanian colleagues on the production of new episodes of a specially adapted Sesame Street. Nevertheless, the Middle East conflict does not stop at the studio doors.

Middle East conflict hampers co-operation and communication

Karim, Hanin and Battuta's counterparts - Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street

​​When the 26-episode series of Sesame Street hits television screens in mid August, the target audience of four to seven-year-olds won’t see any evidence of the difficulties that dogged its creation. Filming for the new series should have been completed long ago, but the repeated inflammation of tension in the Middle East conflict forced plans for the series to be put on ice. The project was funded by international organisations including the European Union and the series, which is an Israeli/Palestinian/Jordanian co-production, was co-ordinated by the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) in New York. The idea was to film a new series of the pedagogical Sesame Street made by Israeli and Palestinian television channels in 1998.

Back then, Hanin and Karim, the two Sesame Street-like characters from the Palestinian series, met Israeli friends outside their house, discovered that they had many things in common and were seen by young fans on both sides of the cultural divide. ‘Today, that’s no longer possible,’ explains Daoud Kuttab, one of the best-known Palestinian journalists and founder of the Al Quds Educational Television Station. ‘These visits have stopped. We also make our programmes independently of one another. Communication has been severed.’ At a time when Palestinians cannot move freely within the occupied territories, let alone travel into East Jerusalem, which has been annexed by Israel, Hanin and Karim’s cross-border visits into Israel would be perceived as unrealistic.

Overall, his employees are disappointed with the American co-ordinators. They only came to the studio in Ramallah for the first time towards the end of filming. The reasons for this delay are unclear, but it is likely that either fear or tough security measures kept them away. Their Israeli colleagues, on the other hand, received regular support from the CTW and were therefore able to eliminate any misunderstandings at a much earlier stage. ‘The problems are elementary,’ says Kuttab. ‘For example, the co-ordinators insisted that we continue filming during the curfew and they just couldn’t see how life-threatening that is.’

Nevertheless, to a great extent the Palestinian team bowed to the requests of the CTW. After all, there is a lot of money at stake in this production and the Palestinian channel desperately needs the funding. What’s more, it’s fun to work with the children and the puppets. ‘What are we supposed to do?’ asks Suha Arraf. ‘Israeli-Palestinian co-productions are sexy and money for such productions is easily authorised.’ She goes on to say that she would have no problem working more closely with her Israeli colleagues. ‘But I don’t want a co-production that pretends that everything between us is OK.’

Highlighting prejudices in a way understood by children

The basic thematic principle behind Sesame Street has shifted but not changed since the 1998 series. ‘It used to be about respect between the Israelis and ourselves,’ explains the team’s producer Said Andoni. ‘Now the focus is on conflicts within society.’ There are a lot of negative stereotypes in Palestine: city dwellers look down on those who live in the country; the inhabitants of the West Bank look down on those in the Gaza Strip; those who have returned to Palestine from other countries are snobs who can’t speak Arabic properly; the inhabitants of the refugee camps are violent and stupid.

But it doesn’t end there: there are also prejudices against the disabled, Christians, Muslims and women. All of this is highlighted in Sesame Street in a way that can easily be understood by children. ‘But above all, the children should learn to respect themselves,’ explains the 30-year-old Andoni. The dangers associated with living in the occupied territories and the unpredictability of life as a result of military activities that change on a daily basis gnaw at the psyche and social relations. ‘We have to address the problems that exist within families and society before tackling bigger issues.’ This is why Israeli society is only treated as a sideline issue. Similarly, Palestinians only make a brief appearance in the Israeli Sesame Street. The team in the Tel Aviv studio also have to work around the conflict; the only difference is that they are doing so on the other side of the fence. ‘We can’t treat our viewers like idiots,’ explains Andoni, ‘after all, children want to be taken seriously.’

© Peter Schäfer
Source: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 8 July 2003