If there is an organisation in Israel that understands the Israeli-Palestinian conflict better than anybody else, it is the Shin Bet. These are the men that walked in the alleys of the refugee camps, and they know the conflict, as they say, from the bottom of the sewers. I’m trying to tell the story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from their point of view. (Dror Moreh, Director of The Gatekeepers, interviewed in Fathom.)

The Academy-Award-nominated documentary The Gatekeepers, commercially released last week in the UK, is a visceral experience. Its combination of technical brilliance, political urgency and moral seriousness left me reeling. Astonishingly, the director Dror Moreh persuaded the last six heads of the Shin Bet – the Israeli security service – to talk at great length and with utter candour about their experiences in the West Bank since 1967. They share the political lessons they have drawn from that experience regarding the impact of the conflict upon Israel. Each reaches the same conclusion: there is an existential necessity of trying to solve the conflict if the Zionist project is to have a future.

Agree or disagree with these men, given who they are, their unanimity should surely command our attention.

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