“The force of truth is irreducible, and this is the centre of the message,” Kingsley said as he introduced the film in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Free screenings will be held in Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps in the hope of spreading the message of tolerance at a time of quiet optimism in the Middle East.

Kingsley, who won one of eight Oscars awarded to the film for his portrayal of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was received in Ramallah as a guest of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, who has given his seal of approval to the “Gandhi Project”.

The first screening at the Palace of Culture was seen by an audience including several Palestinian Cabinet ministers. Others included young people who had spent all their lives in refugee camps. The 1982 film will be shown over the next few weeks in camps in Syria and Lebanon.

Until now it had been seen only with Arabic subtitles. But with the help of two US-based groups — the Skoll Foundation and the Global Catalyst Foundation — 129 Palestinian actors dubbed all the parts in the three-hour epic tracing Gandhi’s life to his assassination by a Hindu fanatic in 1948.

Gandhi and his followers in India shook off the yoke of British rule through a peaceful campaign of civil disobedience. British goods were boycotted causing the Empire economic pain.

They were beaten, but did not resist, and were jailed when they disobeyed laws they considered unjust.

The foundations, which obtained approval from Sony Pictures to screen the film without charge in the West Bank and Gaza, intend to distribute DVDs and show it in cinemas in Palestinian communities in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

“The message [of the movie] is fresh,” Kamran Elahian, an Iranian-American who was instrumental in remaking and distributing the film as part of the Gandhi Project, said. “People should and will be affected by it.” Arun Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson, visited Israel and the Palestinian territories last year promoting the message of non-violence.

Kingsley and the Gandhi Project’s organisers — among them Jeff Skoll, the founder of the eBay internet auction site — said that their aim was non-political and that they had no desire to take a position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Among first-night audiences streaming from the Ramallah cinema there were doubts that Gandhi’s credo of non-violence had resonance for the Palestinian conflict, even if support for suicide bombers has dropped since the declaration of a ceasefire in February.

“There are too many differences,” Dea Opahi, 21, said. “If we stopped resisting Israel, it would probably confiscate all the land left to us.”

Rifat Hmaid, a 23-year-old student at Al-Quds University, agreed that the relevance of the film in the Middle East was questionable. “We would use Gandhi’s way, but it wouldn’t work with the Israelis’.”

Mr Elahian remained undaunted and said that Gandhi’s success in unifying India’s diverse cultures by empowering the rural poor after peacefully forcing the British out in 1947 had many lessons for Palestinians. “Our dream is that a year from now we would have 5,000 — no, 20,000 — Gandhis. Young Gandhis, new Gandhis, Palestinian Gandhis,” he said.

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