This week the UN deputy secretary-general Jan Eliasson called for Israelis and Palestinians to step up the efforts to achieve peace, stressing that the international community also holds the responsibility to end the conflict, at a time when the Middle East "is threatened with terrorism and violent extremism".

We spoke with Leila Sansour, director of the documentary Open Bethlehem, who believes that misconceptions need to be defeated in order to achieve peace in Palestine and the Middle East, where thousands have been killed and displaced in recent conflicts.

In particular, terror group Islamic State (Isis), which aims to overthrow the current government in Syria and Iraq, has claimed thousands of lives since last summer.

The group is renowned for persecuting non-Muslims and non-Sunni, with the Yazidi community mostly bearing the brunt of this violent uprising.

Started as a documentary on how Christian Palestinians in Bethlehem were affected by Israel's decision to build a wall along the West Bank, Sansour's film soon became a call for the creation of a global campaign to bring peace to the Middle East, which has been witnessing increasing violence, with the UN warning that more has to be done to assist displaced people worldwide.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has also warned it is facing a severe budgetary shortfall and it is unable to properly assist Syrian refugees, the largest refugee population after Palestinians.

Sansour believes that the resolution of these conflicts can only be achieved if countries unite and provide a global response able to tackle violence, but also to ensure the preservation of thousand-year-old cities such as Bethlehem.

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