The Green Prince

Films that probe the conflict between Israel and Palestine are a dime a dozen. Films about a friendship that unites the two nations are altogether rarer. The Green Prince is an absorbing documentary about the greatest coup ever pulled off by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. In 1997 its agents captured Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a senior Hamas leader, who subsequently began to spy on the Palestinian leadership for Israel.
Mosab features here as one of two talking heads, the other being his Shin Bet "handler” Gonen Ben Yitzhak. The film enlightens us as to the rigorous spy recruitment procedure at the agency, of the realities of torture among inmates at a Palestinian prison, of Mosab’s disillusionment with his father’s ideology. But the main thrust of the narrative is the growing trust between Mosab and Gonen, which takes an astonishing turn near the film’s end. Is this an augury of the form that a future peace deal may take, or simply an extreme case of Stockholm Syndrome? The Green Prince doesn’t offer an easy answer either way.