The Bridge review: olive oil across the Allenby Bridge — SkimNews
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- Alaa Shehada wrote and performs "The Bridge," co-written and directed by Sam Beale for the Palestine Comedy Club, as a follow-up to "The Horse of Jenin."
- Shehada's mother asks him to deliver a jerry can of home-pressed olive oil to his aunt in Jordan — a journey blocked by the 180m crossing.
- The 180m bridge carries three names — the Dignity Bridge, the Allenby Bridge, and the King Hussein Bridge — depending on the speaker's political standpoint.
- West Bank Palestinians crossing face arbitrary closures, endless queues, random arrests, and disempowering regulations, with passengers dreaming of their own international airport.
- Shehada embodies a cast including a self-aggrandising taxi driver, a smothering old bus passenger, and cold-eyed Israeli teenagers manning checkpoints.
- The olive oil functions as a symbol of violated land still being bulldozed by settlers, the reviewer writes.
- The reviewer calls the piece "tamer, more focused" than "The Horse of Jenin" but "no less urgent," pairing fun with fury.
Why it matters: The Bridge weaponizes humor to dramatize the bureaucratic ordeal West Bank Palestinians face crossing a single 180m bridge — hours of queues, arbitrary arrests, and disempowering regulations. The reviewer elevates a domestic olive-oil delivery into an indictment of settler bulldozing it says continues today.
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