Israeli settlers assaulted one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land on Monday in the occupied West Bank before he was later taken into custody by the Israeli military, according to two of his fellow directors and other witnesses.
Filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was among three Palestinians detained in the village of Susiya, according to attorney Lea Tsemel, who represents them. Police informed her that they were being held at a military base for medical treatment, but as of Tuesday morning, she had been unable to reach them and had no further information regarding their whereabouts.
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Basel Adra, another co-director, witnessed the incident and stated that approximately two dozen settlers—some masked, some armed, and some dressed in Israeli military uniforms—attacked the village. When soldiers arrived, they pointed their weapons at the Palestinians while settlers continued hurling stones.
“We returned from the Oscars, and since then, we have faced daily attacks,” Adra told The Associated Press. “This could be their retaliation against us for making the film. It feels like punishment.”
The Israeli military claimed to have detained three Palestinians suspected of throwing rocks at its forces, along with one Israeli civilian involved in a “violent confrontation” between Israelis and Palestinians—an assertion that witnesses interviewed by the AP disputed. The military stated that the detainees had been handed over to Israeli police for questioning and that an Israeli citizen had been evacuated from the area for medical treatment.
No Other Land, which won this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary, highlights the struggle of residents in the Masafer Yatta region to resist Israeli military efforts to demolish their villages. Ballal and Adra, both from Masafer Yatta, co-directed the film alongside Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
The documentary has garnered multiple international awards, beginning with its debut at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival. However, it has also faced backlash in Israel and abroad, including an instance when Miami Beach officials considered revoking the lease of a cinema that screened the film.
According to Adra, settlers entered the village on Monday evening shortly after residents had broken their fast for Ramadan. One settler—whom Adra claims frequently attacks the village—approached Ballal’s home accompanied by soldiers, who fired shots into the air. Ballal’s wife reportedly heard her husband being beaten outside, screaming, “I’m dying,” Adra recounted.
Adra then witnessed soldiers leading Ballal, handcuffed and blindfolded, from his home into a military vehicle. Speaking to the AP over the phone, he described how Ballal’s blood remained visible on the ground outside his front door.
Another eyewitness, speaking anonymously due to fear of retaliation, corroborated some of Adra’s account.
Additionally, a group of 10 to 20 masked settlers, wielding stones and sticks, attacked activists from the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. They smashed car windows and slashed tyres to force the activists to flee, according to Josh Kimelman, one of the activists at the scene.
Footage provided by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence captured a masked settler shoving and striking two activists in a dusty field at night. The activists rushed back to their vehicle as the sound of rocks hitting the car was heard.
Israel seized the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians seek all three territories for a future state and consider settlement expansion a significant obstacle to a two-state solution.
Israel has established over 100 settlements, housing more than 500,000 settlers with Israeli citizenship. Meanwhile, the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority overseeing population centres.
The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered the expulsion of its predominantly Arab Bedouin residents. Despite this, roughly 1,000 residents have remained, though soldiers routinely enter to demolish homes, tents, water tanks, and olive orchards. Palestinians fear that a full-scale expulsion could happen at any time.
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Since the onset of the Gaza war, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank during large-scale military operations, while settler attacks on Palestinians have surged. At the same time, there has also been an increase in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.