| Summary: | The Israeli film Strangers (Erez Tadmor/ Guy Nattiv, 2007) loosely integrates elements from Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet and uses the archetype of the star-crossed lovers to approach the Middle East conflict. This paper questions how the original structure, which relies on a rivalry between two identical parties, is transposed to a setting where the power relations are marked by inequality. By examining the political meanings and the Orientalist overtones that are embedded in the process of gendering Israel and Palestine through the protagonists, this paper argues that Strangers affirms Israel’s cultural and moral superiority and silences the structural violence of both the occupation and the dispossession of the Palestinians. Granted that a key element in Shakespeare is the final reconciliation between the families, this paper finally questions the pertinence of Shakespeare’s play as a hypotext to address the realities of the Middle East.
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