Hunkered down in a Shanghai high-rise apartment stocked with bags of rice and flour, cooking oil, and vegetables, Liu Zhen is resigned to the government-imposed lockdown – her first of the pandemic – even though she considers it overkill.

“The lockdown isn’t necessary,” says the retired schoolteacher, who’s asked to use a pseudonym to protect her identity, as she braces herself for isolation in Shanghai’s Pudong District. “Omicron has limited harm to our health. Our megacity should not come to a standstill!”

Yet far below Mrs. Liu’s home, traffic is virtually absent from Shanghai streets. A few food delivery workers on motorcycles rush to fill an onslaught of takeout and grocery orders, as panic-buying has left some store shelves empty. Barricades block bridges and main roads. Schools have moved online, and many businesses are shuttered. Shanghai’s Disney Resort closed indefinitely this month.

Mrs. Liu is one of more than 12 million people locked down in Shanghai on Monday as the government began sealing off the metropolis of 25 million for two phases of mass testing through April 5. The drastic move – one Shanghai authorities had vowed to avoid – underscores the challenge China’s leaders face as they attempt to balance political, economic, and public health goals, all amid a historic surge in cases. 

“Facing the spread of such a highly transmissible variant, it’s almost impossible to adopt a targeted approach,” says Yanzhong Huang, director of the Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. “That encourages the use of more heavy-handed, extensive, and even excessive COVID control measures on a large scale – so that is the dilemma here.”

By global standards, the current outbreak in Shanghai and across mainland China is tiny, with about 35,000 confirmed symptomatic cases reported this month. But the numbers represent by far China’s biggest wave since the pandemic erupted in the city of Wuhan in late 2019. Until last month, total confirmed symptomatic cases were just over 109,000, so this recent wave accounts for about 25% of all COVID-19 cases ever confirmed in China. The nation recently reported its first COVID-19 fatalities in more than a year, after two people died in the northern province of Jilin.

The spike in cases marks a test for China’s strict zero-COVID-19 policy – and many residents’ patience – by thwarting authorities’ efforts to shift to more targeted pandemic control measures. Fast-spreading variants and thousands of asymptomatic cases, which China counts separately, led to the large-scale lockdown in Shanghai. Yet experts such as Dr. Huang say that even if the current wave is overcome, the ongoing lockdowns will ultimately prove too costly and isolating – and Shanghai and the rest of China must prepare to jettison the zero-COVID-19 policy in favor of a mitigation strategy. 

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

A health worker in personal protective equipment, pictured through a hotel door's peephole, delivers a meal to travelers undergoing mandatory quarantine on March 21, 2022, in Shanghai.

“Public support for the zero-COVID strategy is in rapid decline, especially in large cities with more informed and open-minded populations,” says Dr. Huang, also a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. Sporadic protests over the lockdowns have broken out in some Chinese cities, and grumbling about the zero-COVID-19 policy is widespread on social media. 

In one typical comment Sunday, a netizen complained that in the third year of the epidemic, “there still aren’t norms that everyone can understand. Whenever there is an outbreak, I only see the simple and harsh blockade of the community, but not the delivery of people’s life necessities.”

Weighing the costs

Shanghai today epitomizes China’s dilemma as it seeks to balance the competing demands of public health and economic growth. At a top-level meeting on March 17, Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for minimizing the impact of epidemic controls on development, and as recently as Saturday, Shanghai authorities asserted that the city is too vital economically to close down entirely.

“If the world’s largest container port is suspended ... how many cargo ships will be stranded at sea?” asked Wu Fan, a member of Shanghai’s COVID Epidemic Prevention and Control Group, in an interview with the state-run People’s Daily. “We cannot afford it.”

Still, Dr. Wu, who is also deputy dean of Fudan University’s School of Medicine, acknowledged that Shanghai health officials were scrambling to contain the outbreak. She told People’s Daily that mass testing is like “mopping the floor with the faucet turned on.”

Meanwhile, the public is growing increasingly weary of COVID-19 restrictions. Locked down for the past two weeks in his neighborhood in Shanghai’s upscale Xuhui District, novel editor Gu Nan feels his life has come to a standstill.

Aly Song/Reuters

People pass food to residents over the barriers of an area under lockdown due to COVID-19 in Shanghai, March 25, 2022.

“At home, my work productivity is not very high. My mind is wandering,” he says in a phone call, asking to withhold his real name so he can speak freely. “With everyone cooped up ... it’s easy to be in a bad mood or to feel down.”

Since March 13, Mr. Gu has undergone five mandatory COVID-19 tests. His neighborhood was initially sealed off for 48 hours, then for four more days, and now indefinitely. “We don’t know when this will be lifted,” he says. “We ask our neighborhood committee, and they aren’t clear about it either – everyone is awaiting notice.”

Testing ground

Until Monday’s two-phase, citywide lockdown, Shanghai had attempted to control the outbreak using a more targeted, grid approach aimed at early detection, with block-by-block testing, contact tracing, and sealing off hundreds of neighborhoods. Even that less draconian approach seemed overly risk averse to Mr. Gu.

“Maybe I have one or two cases in my community – but there are more than 1,000 people who have to stop everything. It is very unreasonable,” says Mr. Gu, who considers the virus as a mild illness for most people. “That’s too high a price.”

A less costly strategy, experts say, would be for China to prioritize the protection of older people and other at-risk groups while expanding hospital capacity to handle surges. Loosening the zero-COVID-19 policy would also require an education campaign to prevent panic after years in which government media has highlighted the pandemic’s dangers, and local officials have been fired for failing to prevent outbreaks, says Dr. Huang.

Many residents such as Mrs. Liu, the retired teacher, are now debating the value of the zero-COVID-19 restrictions. While viewing the lockdown as too harsh, she also worries that “if COVID is out of control, it will bring big problems. As citizens, we have no choice but just to ... cooperate with our government.”

Others such as Mr. Gu hope that Shanghai and China will move toward living with COVID-19, since there is no medical way to eradicate it.

“Everyone has the idea that we can coexist with the virus, because you have no way to control it or make the virus disappear completely,” says Mr. Gu.

As unannounced lockdowns swept the city last week, office worker Cui Le hurried home early, concerned she might be confined at her company. “They don’t tell you in advance about the lockdowns,” she says, withholding her real name to protect her identity. Since then, she’s been working from home, and her neighborhood remains open.

“In Shanghai, maybe this wave ... is an opportunity,” says Ms. Cui. “We can try and see whether we can relax a little. Shanghai can do it first and see if we can handle the result. Then we can slowly expand it.”

In some ways Diana Bukhman is still in her Odesa, even as her two young sons bounce around her in slippered feet in the lobby of a Jerusalem hotel, their new temporary home.

Her green eyes sparkle as she describes the Ukrainian port city where she was born, with its landmark opera house, night club scene, and her beloved apartment building in the center of town where she has lived most of her life, as have five generations of her family.

Her parents are still there, refusing to leave even as they insisted that she did. They packed her bags for her when she was too immobilized with the shock of leaving to do so, then took her and her boys to the bus that would transport them and other members of the Jewish community to the border of Romania.

She; her sons, Issac, age 9, and Rafik, age 8; and the others on the bus, including older men and women and the passengers’ cats and dogs, became part of the largest wave of European refugees since World War II.

“Dad, what should I do if they shoot on us?” she asked her father, a well-known photographer in Odesa, as they climbed onto the bus.

He instructed her to cover her sons’ bodies with her own, and then to grab her suitcase to shield herself. About 12 hours later as they approached the border, at the sound of shelling, she found herself scrambling to do just that.

“Now I’m living in the moment, hour to hour,” says Ms. Bukhman. “When the boys go to sleep I take a shower and I cry and cry. I wake up in the middle of the night and realize I’m in a hotel. In the morning I wake up, and have to be strong. I have no choice.”

Ms. Bukhman is one of more than 7,000 Ukrainian refugees who have fled to Israel since Russia invaded her homeland last month. Another 15,000 are expected in the coming months. Most, like Ms. Bukhman and her sons, are Jewish, or have at least one Jewish grandparent.

They have been placed in hotels or are staying with relatives as an Israeli national debate swirls around them – about who among the Ukrainian exodus of refugees should be allowed into Israel, either as potential immigrants or for a humane respite.

More generous response?

The refugee crisis has created a divide over whether the official approach is a just one in the face of Europe’s greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II.

On one side are those who want a more open, humanitarian policy – not just for those with Jewish ties, but anyone needing shelter. On the other, those who argue that Israel is a small country, created in part as a refuge for Jews, and could have its Jewish identity overwhelmed if too many non-Jews are allowed to settle here.

Courtesy of Diana Bukhman

Diana Bukhman's parents say goodbye to their grandsons, ahead of their journey from Odesa, Ukraine, to the Romanian border, en route to Israel.

Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s interior minister, initially set a policy that those non-Jewish refugees allowed to come to Israel would be limited in number, and would have to pay a deposit to enter. A public backlash ensued, including an appeal from the Ukrainian ambassador to Israel, and the policy was reversed to let in relatives of Israelis.

Israel already has a large immigrant population from Ukraine. And some 20,000 non-Jewish Ukrainians, in the country as foreign workers, have been allowed to stay on temporarily.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, has been among those asking Israel to be more generous in opening its doors.

“We are asking for your help,” he said in addressing Israel’s parliament last week, noting his people were now scattered, looking for refuge. “They are looking for security. They are looking for a way to stay in peace. As you once searched.”

Debate over core values

Mr. Zelenskyy’s appeal goes to the heart of Israel’s identity as a state founded as a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution, and hits at a core question the country is wrestling with: how to define Jewish values in responding to the current crisis. In part the response has pitted a religious right against a more secular left.

On the right, especially, there have been warnings that a massive arrival of non-Jews into Israel would endanger the Jewish character of the state. Within the broad government itself there are such cautionary voices, like that of Ms. Shaked, who is from the right-wing Yamina party, but also Tomer Moskowitz, who heads Israel’s Immigration Authority.

He told Yediot Ahronot, a popular Israeli newspaper, “They say I discriminate among refugees? I say openly that I discriminate. Israel needs to discriminate for the benefit of those eligible to immigrate. That’s why it was created.”

Reflecting on what makes a “Jewish” outlook or character, Anshel Pfeffer, an Israeli author and journalist at Haaretz, a left-wing newspaper, issued a somewhat barbed tweet that reveals the emotional depth to the debate.

“There are various ways to define the ‘Jewish character,’” he wrote. “There are those who are self-confident in the resilience of Israeli society and the original Jewish culture created here, and are therefore full of compassion and hospitality toward providing refuge. There are those whose Jewish identity is so haunted, hollow, and informed by exile, that the specter of several thousand refugees makes them tremble with fear.”

According to a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, 60% of Israelis support the government’s policy of taking in refugees who are Jewish. On taking in refugees whether or not they are Jewish, 51.1% of those surveyed were opposed and 44% were in favor. According to the survey, 74% of Israelis on the left supported admitting all refugees from Ukraine, compared with 31% on the right.

Courtesy of Diana Bukhman

Diana Bukhman sitting between her sleeping sons, Rafik, on her right, and Issac, on the bus from Odesa, Ukraine, to the Romanian border, en route to Israel.

Strategic concerns

Israel’s anguished debate over immigration versus rescuing refugees is interwoven with the strategic question of overall support for Ukraine, which is complicated by Israel’s desire to maintain a working relationship with Russia.

Commentators say Israel has to walk a diplomatic tightrope because of Russia’s power-broker status in Syria, where Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group that is an avowed enemy of Israel, is seen as posing a threat.

As a consequence it has rejected Ukrainian pleas for arms and refused to join the international embargo against Russia. But it has also mediated between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Zelenskyy, and has sent Ukraine considerable humanitarian aid, including a large field hospital now operating in western Ukraine.

The Jewish Agency, a semi-governmental organization, has been overseeing humanitarian and rescue operations in Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Moldova for Jewish refugees, and has housed over 8,000 to date in both Europe and Israel, including Ms. Bukhman and her sons.

A mother’s journey 

At her hotel in Jerusalem, Ms. Bukhman says she is uncomfortable discussing the policy debate on refugees, but feels fortunate.

For now, the 37-year-old single mother is still doing her job remotely, as a volunteer coordinator for Odesa’s Jewish Community Center, setting up zoom classes for kids and older adults, for everything from yoga to English lessons.

She scrolls through images on her phone. Among them, pictures of her sons saying goodbye to her parents on the bus, her father forming a heart with his hands as does one of her sons; the other is waving goodbye.

In another, her hand is pressed against the glass of the bus window, reaching out to meet her boyfriend’s hand. He remains in Ukraine, where he is part of a civilian guard assisting the police. He lives on the outskirts of Odesa, and has been sending videos of himself, booms echoing in the background.

Every time a siren sounds over Odesa, her father, ever the photographer, rushes to the balcony to see what images he can capture.

Ms. Bukhman fluctuates between checking updates from home and dealing with the bureaucracy of starting a new life in Israel.

“I feel like I know nothing, like I’m a newborn kitten, my eyes still closed. Usually when people make aliyah [Hebrew for immigration to Israel] they prepare by learning Hebrew, planning where they will live,” she says.

She’s not sure where she will be two weeks from now. That’s when her government-funded hotel stay will end and she will have to find a city to live in, an affordable apartment to rent, school for her boys.

Shortly before the war began, she says, a Jewish organization she works with abroad called to warn her to flee the impending war. “But I said they were being crazy. It’s the 21st century. What kind of war could there be?”

Joe Giddens/PA Images/Reuters

Rend Platings (center) talks to Ludmila Starkova, who fled Kharkiv, Ukraine, with her family following the Russian invasion, in her new house in Caldecote near Cambridge, England, March 22, 2022. Ms. Platings helped Ms. Starkova and the rest of her family of 10 find a new home in the U.K.

When Gavin Price first saw the images of Ukrainians fleeing war, he immediately began the task of rallying Aberfeldy, a Scottish town of just 2,000 people, to offer them assistance.

Within days, the pub landlord and football manager produced his own register of local homeowners offering holiday homes and spare bedrooms. “Our whole community wants to help as best as they can, in whatever small means possible,” says Mr. Price, who is currently working to bring a young Ukrainian mother and her newborn child to Scotland.

But the British government has not been making it easy.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the British public has shown strong sympathy for Ukrainian refugees and called for the United Kingdom to grant them sanctuary. But while European leaders quickly waived visa restrictions for Ukrainians, the British government has dragged its feet on opening the country’s borders to the refugees.

After a series of chaotic responses, the government is finally offering a refugee policy more in line with what the public demands. But the delay in enacting it has many wondering why it took so long. The answer seems to be a combination of anti-immigration sentiments in the current government and a lingering culture of distrust and dysfunction within the Home Office, the department responsible for overseeing Britain’s immigration policy.

Playing catch-up

The U.K.’s current program for Ukrainian refugees is its “Homes For Ukraine” initiative, which grants visas to Ukrainians who have found households in the U.K. willing to board and sponsor them. The households in return are given a monthly £350 ($460) allowance to underwrite the expenses of hosting. More than 100,000 Britons expressed interest within 24 hours of the government announcing the program on March 14.

But “Homes for Ukraine” came after fits and starts. At the onset of war, only Ukrainians with British nationality or permanent residency status in the U.K. could bring immediate relatives via a family visa program. That program was expanded after criticism that it had excluded some family members.

Facing public criticism for not doing enough, the government soon opened a second route at visa processing centers in Belgium and France for those fleeing the war.

Andrew Couldridge/Reuters

People look at a mural created by street artist Nathan Murdoch in support of Ukraine and Palestine in Peterborough, England, March 15, 2022.

But that quickly came under fire as well, with critics saying pop-up visa application centers were nowhere near international train routes offering free rides to fleeing Ukrainians. Amid mounting public pressure to act, the government announced the “Homes For Ukraine” plan.

A recent poll by Savanta ComRes found that 54% of British voters think visa requirements should be dropped entirely for Ukrainian refugees – a marked shift from the country’s closed-door attitude around and after Brexit.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, accustomed to crafting policy for voters who are hard-liners on immigration, is still trying to catch up with this dramatic shift in public opinion, says Patrick Diamond, a former policy adviser for 10 Downing Street and now a lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London.

Yet the Home Office’s inability to respond quickly goes beyond the current home secretary’s tenure. Dr. Diamond says the immigration department is a “systemic problem that no prime minister has been able to deal with” since at least 2006, when then-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour government declared the department as “not fit for purpose.”

Chronic underfunding and structural issues have caused “persistent problems around the Home Office and how it oversees the immigration system” that persist today, Dr. Diamond says.

The biggest nemesis to a functional Home Office is its deeper cultural problems, says Sam Bright, investigations editor at the Byline Times. “Successive Conservative governments have been renowned for their ‘hostile environment’ policy on immigration,” he says. The approach was in theory meant to target illegal immigration by creating an environment so unpleasant that migrants would voluntarily leave the U.K. to escape it. Deep-seated discrimination from immigration officials, poor questioning techniques, and a lack of sensitivity beset the immigration department to this day, Mr. Bright says.

Andrew Milligan/PA/AP

Julie Joseph of charity Massive Outpouring of Love poses in Dumfries, Scotland, with a large number of letters of love and support written by children to be included with donated aid to be sent to Ukrainian refugees, March 21, 2022.

The “hostile environment” policy of former Prime Minister Theresa May most notoriously came to a head in 2018, when the Home Office wrongly detained and deported legal British nationals who had arrived as children from former Caribbean colonies before 1973. At the time, Black British Labour member of Parliament David Lammy told ministers that the problems “[are] a direct result of systemic incompetence, callousness, and cruelty within our immigration system.”

Doing better for Ukrainians

The government’s new plan for Ukrainians is unfit for purpose and “absolutely chaotic,” says Susan Hubbard, a London-based poet hoping to give up her spare room to Ukrainian refugees. It has yet to match potential sponsors with refugees and has no advice hotline available, she says.

“It’s the wild west out there, so I’ve done my own research to find potential matches,” says Ms. Hubbard.

The Guardian reports that only 1,000 of 25,000 completed “Homes For Ukraine” applications have been approved so far. Another 21,600 visas have been granted to refugees with family members in the U.K.

Former migrant Raul Gonzalez uses his spare time to fix the state’s “cowboy approach.” The Spanish-born scientist gathers and shares information from verified mental health and humanitarian organizations on social media platforms, targeting “well meaning” homeowners in search of a match on social media. He hopes to match refugees and homeowners by “asking the questions not raised by the government: Can you integrate your life with a person, and can you take responsibility for a stranger’s safety?”

Some of the problems of matching hosts with refugees can be bypassed in Scotland, after the Scottish government was approved as a “super sponsor,” which can be selected instead of an individual sponsor on a visa application.

For Mr. Price, the values of Britain’s leadership have not matched that of ordinary citizens.

“The Home Office must ease the visa entry requirements for Ukrainian nationals immediately. There is a strong desire to offer support,” he says. “I realize it’s only a drop in the ocean, but we would like to help in any way we can.”

Altaf Qadri/AP

An Indian student who was evacuated from Ukraine meets his family upon arrival at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, March 11, 2022. Hundreds of Indian medical students were stuck in bunkers in Sumy – one of Ukraine's hardest-hit cities – before they returned home.

On Feb. 24, Divyanshu Gahlot woke up to a frantic video call. Overnight, Russia had invaded Ukraine, where he was attending his sixth and final year of medical school, and on the phone, Mr. Gahlot’s friend was pointing out his window at the plumes of smoke where Russian bombs were making landfall.

It would take nearly a week for Mr. Gahlot to make it home to India, and he wasn’t alone. About 22,000 Indians, mostly medical students, have fled Ukraine since the war began. Their ordeal – dodging bombs, walking for miles in freezing temperatures, long waits without food or water at border checkpoints – prompted wall-to-wall news coverage in India. It also begged a question: Why were so many Indians studying in Ukraine in the first place?

Every year, roughly 1.5 million students take the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, or NEET, to compete for some 90,000 seats in medical schools across India. About half of those are at private universities where tuition and other fees easily exceed $100,000. As a result, tens of thousands of Indian students opt to study medicine in countries like China, Russia, and Ukraine, where education is cheaper.

Opposition to NEET has been brewing since the government introduced the exam in 2013. Critics say that NEET favors students from elite backgrounds who can afford specialized coaching – echoing arguments against the SAT and ACT in the United States – or who can attend expensive private colleges where the bar for admission is lower. “The system is not fair; there cannot be any doubt on that,” says Dr. Anand Krishnan, a professor of community medicine at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. “Medical profession is not just pure knowledge. You have to be more humane. There are a lot of other characteristics which are important to look for.”

Courtesy of Divyanshu Gahlot

Divyanshu Gahlot (left) poses with a guard at Ukraine's border with Romania, where he spent nearly two days in the freezing cold, waiting to be evacuated.

High competition, high cost

When Mr. Gahlot was in 11th grade, he left his hometown of Siryawali in northwest Uttar Pradesh to go to Kota, Rajasthan, the academic coaching capital of India. There, he says, he followed a grueling regimen of studying six to seven hours a day, but fell about 50 points short of what was required to get into a government-run college.

“It was totally depressing. I would think I’m not smart enough to be a doctor, I can’t do this,” he says. Several of his friends in similar situations chose different career paths. But Mr. Gahlot had made up his mind to become a doctor in eighth grade, and turned to his last resort – going abroad. He says he was too ashamed to tell his peers he was leaving India, because many see foreign medical students as “quitters” who weren’t able to crack NEET.

The fierce competition for Indian medical school seats cost another student his life. Naveen Gyanagoudar had gone outside to buy food when he was killed by Russian shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Speaking to local reporters, his distraught father lamented that despite scoring 97% on high school exams, his son couldn’t get admission to a medical school in his own country.

The double blow of high competition and high cost means India’s new generation of doctors lacks diversity. “They are predominantly urban-centric kids, from well-entrenched, reasonably well-off middle-class families,” says Dr. Sita Naik, a former member of the Medical Council of India, which used to oversee medical education. Dr. Naik says these graduates are unlikely to move to rural areas, where the demand for doctors is the greatest. Rural India is home to two-thirds of the country’s population but only 20% of its doctors, according to a 2016 report.

ABACAPRESS.COM/Reuters/File

Candidates check test results from the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), India's highly competitive medical school entrance exam, in Ajmer, India, Sept. 12, 2021.

In search of a fairer system

Some of the harshest opposition to NEET comes from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where social justice movements have historically centered on access to education. In February, the state’s chief minister, Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin, called the exam “knowledge untouchability of the 21st century,” comparing its bias to that faced by India’s most oppressed castes.

Krishna Baskaran, a former Tamil Nadu schoolteacher who writes on education issues, agrees that a multiple-choice test covering physics, chemistry, and biology is a poor way to determine college admissions. 

“You don’t need merit to enroll yourself in college,” he says. “It is supposed to give you merit.” 

Before NEET, medical hopefuls would take up to a dozen entrance tests administered by different state governments and elite institutions. That was too stressful, says Dr. Krishnan, adding that a single, common test is a better idea. 

“NEET should be there, but don’t make it the only criteria. We have to find a sort of hybrid model,” says Dr. Krishnan. That could mean giving colleges the freedom to choose their own candidates through a series of interviews. Prior to NEET, that’s how admissions worked at Vellore’s Christian Medical College, whose graduates typically go on to work in underserved communities.

A 2021 report commissioned by the Tamil Nadu government echoes this call for a holistic approach. It found that admission requirements in India were “diametrically opposite” to other countries, most of which relied on a mix of factors – national entrance exams, interviews, high school GPA, etc. – to decide who gets admission into medical school, and granted more decision-making power to local governments or individual institutions.

Some states have also tried to stem systemic bias by reserving a proportion of medical school seats for underrepresented groups, including public high school graduates. Whatever the solution, the guiding principle, Mr. Krishna says, should be to “keep the entry point as democratic and as accessible as possible.” 

Back home, Mr. Gahlot is following the war in Ukraine closely, hoping he’ll somehow be able to finish his degree. Afterward, he plans to set up a practice in his village. There weren’t many doctors in Uttar Pradesh’s rural Bijnor district when he was growing up, and he wants to change that.

In 2010, hiker Pam Bales came across a man sitting atop Mount Washington in New Hampshire amid the frigid lashes of a snowstorm. He was wearing sneakers and shorts. And he was near comatose.

A movie opening March 25, “Infinite Storm” recounts how Ms. Bales saved the man’s life. The thriller is also a mystery: Who is the survivor, known only as “John,” and why was he up there?

Screenwriter Joshua Rollins first read about the harrowing rescue in an article by journalist Ty Gagne. When Mr. Rollins reached out to Ms. Bales – a veteran of the Pemigewasset Valley Search and Rescue Team – he discovered that there was another layer of the tale that had yet to be told. The movie, starring Naomi Watts, reveals how the mission was ultimately an emotional rescue not just for John but also the hero. 

Staff writer Stephen Humphries recently spoke by phone with screenwriter Joshua Rollins (whose wife, Amanda Paulson, was formerly a Monitor journalist). Their conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, happened the morning after the film’s March 24 New York premiere – at a theater where Mr. Rollins saw “E.T.” as a boy and realized how magical movies can be. 

How did you come across the story of this rescue?

A few people, including my wife, sent me the story because we had hiked that hike numerous times. Immediately when I read it, the thing that struck me was how Pam wouldn’t give up on this stranger, even if it meant that she was going to be stuck on the mountain with him. 

Courtesy of Joshua Rollins

Joshua Rollins' script for "Infinite Storm" was influenced by interviews with hiker Pam Bales and the philosophy of naturalist John Muir.

The real-life John wrote in a letter, “The entire time she treated me with compassion, authority, confidence, and the impression that I mattered.” What are the other qualities in Pam that you wanted to convey in the movie? 

It was really important in the script that we not have moments of anger or frustration from Pam. There are a few moments that have sort of snuck their way into the script. But Pam herself never showed anger or frustration. We have a moment in the script now where Naomi … has a mini breakdown, and a moment of just “How am I going to do this?” But then she takes a breath and she goes back.

What do you think are the qualities of humanity in the story that make it such a universal tale that audiences are drawn to?

After I tracked her down and talked to her that first time, [Pam] opened up to me about her life and the loss that she suffered. She had two young children that died in a gas leak. She literally kissed her children goodnight, went to bed, and woke up in the hospital being told that her children were dead. … I can only imagine what that must be like, and to not only come back from that, but then be able to show such empathy and love and regard for your fellow man. 

What are the qualities that have made Pam so resilient?

She made choices in her life to rebuild, and it’s sort of made things easier. But she’s never chosen the easy path. She’s still a volunteer in [various National Parks], and she goes out every morning and hikes the trails. 

Last night [at the premiere], Naomi sought her out … because Naomi and Pam had not met in person before. And so Naomi made a beeline for Pam, and they hugged, and then they took pictures on the red carpet. And to see Pam allow herself a night where everyone got to appreciate her was extremely uncomfortable for her to do. But then she settled into it. I think Pam has always been a giver. Pam’s whole thing is, you know, be pleasant to everyone, and if they’re not pleasant, you be even more pleasant. That’s a great quality to have.

Saving someone else’s life is a profound experience, but far from a common one. Had she thought about what that experience meant to her?

Pam, when we were talking, talked a lot about how one of her very first jobs on a search and rescue was a recovery. It made her think about not being able to save her two children and not being able to get there in time. That feeling of helplessness is something that Pam never wanted to experience again. That helped shape her philosophy which was, if I can get to someone on time, I’m going to get them down the mountain. John did not make it easy for her.

Her character makes a powerful argument for life, for not giving into despair, by quoting environmentalist John Muir. Where did you find it? 

I was reading Edward Abbey and John Muir. I have a bookshelf of all my favorite major authors. I found that quote: “The universe is an infinite storm of beauty and sadness.” It says a lot about [how] it’s not a beautiful life. It’s a life filled with storms. It’s a life filled with chaos. But you can still find beauty in those moments. 

“Infinite Storm” is in theaters. The film is rated R for some language and brief nudity.

AP

Bahrain's Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, left, Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Morocco's Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, and United Arab Emirates' Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, pose March 28 at the Negev Summit.

Since its creation in 1948, Israel has had few opportunities to extend a hand to Arab nations in what its founding proclamation calls “good neighborliness.” In decades since, limited diplomatic recognition of Israel by a few Arab states has not enabled Israel to offer the “bonds of cooperation and mutual help” to many enemies. That changed this week with a high-level meeting of four Arab countries and Israel – the first on Israeli soil.

And not just any soil. Foreign ministers from Egypt, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Morocco gathered with top Israeli officials in the Negev desert community of Sde Boker, the resting place of Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion. The location was a strong sign of Israel’s rootedness in the Middle East as well as new cooperation on shared concerns for each nation’s security.

Those concerns mainly focused on how to counter Iran’s militant threats and the perception that the United States offers less protection for its friends in the region. One of the summit’s outcomes was an understanding to cooperate on security intelligence. “The shared capabilities we are building intimidates and deters our common enemies, first and foremost Iran and its proxies,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.

The war in Ukraine is also drawing Arabs and Israelis closer. Much of the region is dependent on wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia. Arab leaders cannot afford domestic tensions over rising food prices. Israel can help them, especially by offering advanced agricultural technology.

This significant upgrade in Arab-Israeli cooperation comes a year and a half after the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords. That pact saw four Arab countries start to normalize ties with Israel, following in the footsteps of Egypt and Jordan since the 1970s.

One result of this summit is that the foreign ministers agreed to make it a regular gathering. The Palestinian Authority was also invited to join in order to better address ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

The big absentee at the summit was Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s most influential state. But it has signaled possible official ties with Israel by allowing Israeli airliners to use Saudi airspace. Before this week’s talks, Israel sent a message of “sorrow” to Saudi leaders for attacks on their country by Iran-backed Yemeni rebels on Friday.

Across the Middle East, hands of peace are being extended to longtime rivals as many nations set up diplomatic activity. “Our region is tired of war,” says Omar Hilale, Moroccan ambassador to the United Nations. “We need peace in hearts.” For Israel and its new Arab friends, good neighborliness may be at hand.