I used to watch this movie every single year. I also did a college paper on the man.
He was a legend in his own time. The movie is not entirely accurate and I don't know which scenes are inaccurate.
The movie is on my mind because of Hamas attacking the Gaza Strip and honestly I don't even know if that's the right way to say that. I'm trying to read up on the conflict and get some kind of understanding of it and I don't know that I will ever understand it.
AT ALL.
This rabbit hole is too deep. I open an article and it lists a country or organization and I click on the link or do a search and it's bottomless.
This is the opening for the Wikipedia piece on Palestine: The first written records referring to Palestine emerged in the 12th-century BCE...
That's more than 3000 years.
This is beginning to make me think of a piece I read years ago of a guy trying to get directions in a small town and unable to parse any of the directions given because sooner or later they all refer to "the tree that got struck by lightning (decades ago)." So if you aren't a local and you don't know what tree they are talking about, you have no hope of following their directions.
I didn't grow up in the Middle East. I will likely never meaningfully understand why this conflict is happening.
So back to the movie, which I will grant you is not actually a documentary and is full of historically inaccurate info.
Lawrence concludes if he can get 50 men through the Nefud Desert, more will join them. The Nefud is brutal and they cross under cover of darkness to survive the extreme environment.
They get to the end of it and there's an empty camel. A rider was lost.
Someone discourages Lawrence from going back for him, saying "It is written." In other words: It's the will of God. Leave it alone.
Lawrence goes back and rescues the guy. He says "Nothing is written until I write it."
Then a conflict breaks out which threatens to be the end of his campaign to take Aqaba before it can begin. He has people from two tribes and they are ready to go to war with each other over some incident.
Lawrence asks what is going on and his advisor says "It's old." In other words, whatever set it off is an excuse. These two tribes have a long and bitter history with each other.
There's no point in trying to "settle" it or "seek justice" or something. Trying to understand the past is hopeless.
So Lawrence goes to the two bickering leaders of each faction and says "If the man dies, you will be satisfied?" Yes. And "If no one from that tribe kills him, you will be satisfied?" Yes.
And Lawrence announces he will kill the man to settle the matter, at which point he learns it is the man he retrieved from certain death who had been lost in the Nefud.
He shoots him anyway.
I don't know why Hamas and whomever is at war. I don't know if it helps to spend time trying to understand the past.
But maybe if someone could sort out what each side wants for the present and the future, someone could broker a deal.
Assuming both sides can focus on peaceable goals for making life better for their people and set aside a desire for some kind of "revenge."