Instead, he wound up working for Israeli intelligence.
Yousef’s story, which he retells in the doc “The Green Prince,” is one of unimaginable courage and moral awakening: He began to turn against his compatriots when he saw them torturing and killing other Palestinians in prison, on a false suspicion of snitching.
And his friendship with his Shin Bet handler, Gonen ben Itzhak, is deep and ultimately life-saving.
The film is marred by a visually static format — it mostly consists of a long interview with each of the two principals — and by its cheesy spy-movie score and docudrama reenactments.
Still, its ironies are redolent of John le Carré — Yousef had to be imprisoned so he wouldn’t appear to be an informant — and the stakes of his deception are such that the film deserves to be remade with actors, Hollywood style.
Plans for that are already underway.
