Did anyone else find the title... misleading?

What's needed is business partnerships. No one will blow up their own coffee shop or art gallery. No one wants to destroy their own livelihood and this area of the world would be a tourist goldmine.The Palestinians need a reason to invest in the future and not the past. This entire area is so rich in the history of two of the world's greatest religions that it could be a very profitable joint venture. War has achieved nothing. Give business a chance.

...it's not going to do anything to change the fact that Israel was founded on colonialism and remains an occupying power and an ethno-religious state. There are some problems that warm, fuzzy, rhetoric just can't solve, and this is one of them. I know many within my friends and family who agree with the central message of efforts like these and yet maintain the most hardline Zionist stance in regards to Israel. Unless the 'we're all human' realization somehow results in Israelis allowing the thousands of humans encamped outside their walls to return to their homes, this is an exercise in futility and distraction.

The late Great Edward Said summoned up this kind of 'shared experience' dialogue:

"Through the period from 1969 to 1991, I and many other Palestinians had had private, even secret, meetings and peace discussions with Israelis, American Jews, and others who were concerned about the issue.

By the period of the intifadah I had lost interest in the encounter groups principally because they were often manipulated by professional "conflict resolution" technicians, and also because they were now being used by the PLO not to

argue the Palestinian case but, in my opinion, to try to prove to Israelis how many concessions the PLO was prepared to make.

I also found that most members of the Israeli Left (including Peace Now) were focused on asking for more Palestinian concessions (recognize us, give up on the National Charter, etc.) without offering anything in return. In other words, these private attempts at reconciliation - with some notable exceptions - reflected the exact balance of power between us, a very weak partner and a very strong one, some of whose advocates shamelessly kept asking the victims of military occupation and dispossession for various moral acknowledgements from their victims."

Harry Clark wrote a powerful and eye-opening critique of this kind of action called "Refusing to be Effective" which appeared in CounterPunch in late March this year. I urge everyone to read it.

That article I mentioned in my first letter is here:

http://www.counterpunch.org/clark03282007.html

The point of her film was not to initiate peace discussions, as English_roG points out "always" fails. But if people can come together on neutral topics, such as losing weight, then they have an opportunity to relate on human terms and may be more reluctant to lob a rock or shoot a gun at that person.

I may be wrong about the posters to this article to far, but they sound like men. Men who say "we've tried that and it doesn't work" or "this is an exercise in futility and distraction... unless...." may not understand that this could be the beginnings of a grassroots effort to see each other as human first and come together on the commonalities, such as weight loss, education, poverty, yes and businesses.

We see where the "Peace talks" amongst men have taken us. Maybe a little effort on all our parts to reduce our waist, and waste of life, could start a revolution of peace. Kudos to Yael Luttwak for being courageous enough to walk into Ramallah, and to the women willing to work together for a common goal. Even if it is "just" to lose weight. IMhumbleO

"For some reason, I think women are able to react in a less aggressive way. They'll sit down. They'll eat together. They bear children."

And in the case of the West Bank/Gazan Arabs, they'll ululate with Islamic pride when the children they bear blow other women's children to pieces in nightclubs and cafes.

Ultimately a two state solution will never work if those states are divided from each other by a wall (literal or metaphorical) have little interaction and resent and fear each other. This film is not about how to solve the political problems, it is about creating a culture where that political solution can take root.