Oscar-winner Palestinian director attacked, abducted by Israelis

Hamdan Ballal, co-director of Academy Awards-winning documentary ‘No Other Land’, was taken from his home in the West Bank — territory Israel illegally occupies

Hamdan Ballal (3rd from L), co-director of the Oscar-winning ‘No Other Land’
Hamdan Ballal (3rd from L), co-director of the Oscar-winning ‘No Other Land’
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Israeli settlers beat up one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning documentary film No Other Land on Monday, 24 March, in the occupied West Bank — before he was detained by the Israeli military, according to two of his fellow directors and other witnesses, reports the Associated Press.

The filmmaker — Hamdan Ballal — was one of three Palestinians detained in the village of Susiya, according to attorney Leah Tsemmel.

The IDF too have confirmed arresting four persons, per DW.

Police apparently told Tsemmel they are being held at a military base for ‘medical treatment’. She has not been allowed to speak with them.

Eye-witness accounts, including Jewish voices

Basel Adra, another co-director, witnessed the detention and said around two dozen settlers — some masked, some carrying guns, some in Israeli uniform — attacked the village. The soldiers who arrived pointed their guns at the Palestinians, while the settlers continued throwing stones.

“We came back from the Oscars and every day since, there is an attack on us,” Adra told the Associated Press.

This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment.
Basel Adra, co-director of 'No Other Land', on the assault on and detainment of co-director of Hamdan Ballal

The Israeli military said it had detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at IDF soldiers and one Israeli ‘civilian’ involved in a “violent confrontation” between Israelis and Palestinians — a claim witnesses interviewed by the AP disputed.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that four Palestinians, including Ballal, were injured during an attack on the village of Susya, near Hebron, in which radical Jewish settlers threw stones at residents and at their houses and cars.

The military said it had transferred the arrested trio of Palestinians to Israeli police for questioning and had evacuated an Israeli citizen from the area to receive medical treatment.

No Other Land, which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages in the Israeli occupied territory. In effect, an account of Israeli settler-colonial violence and insidious occupation and displacement.

Ballal and Adra, both from Masafar Yatta, made the joint Palestinian–Israeli production with Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The film has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, as when Miami Beach proposed ending the lease of a movie theatre that screened the documentary.

Adra said the settlers entered the village on Monday evening, shortly after residents broke the daily fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramzan.

A settler — who according to Adra frequently attacks the village — walked over to Ballal's home with the military, and soldiers shot in the air. Ballal's wife heard her husband being beaten outside and scream “I'm dying", according to Adra.


Adra then saw the soldiers lead Ballal, handcuffed and blindfolded, from his home into a military vehicle. Speaking to the AP by phone, he said Ballal's blood was still splattered on the ground outside his own front door.

Some of the details of Adra's account were backed up by another eyewitness, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

A group of 10–20 masked settlers with stones and sticks also assaulted activists with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, smashing their car windows and slashing tires to make them flee the area, one of the activists at the scene, Josh Kimelman, told the AP.

Video provided by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists in a dusty field at night. The activists rush back to their car as rocks can be heard thudding against the vehicle.

The IDF, meanwhile, in a statement have denied the ambulance story.

According to DW, the statement blamed the Palestinians for starting the altercation, as "several terrorists hurled rocks at Israeli citizens" after which "a violent confrontation broke out, involving mutual rock-hurling". (Naturally, there was no mention of the egregious illegality of Israeli settlers in Palestinian territory.)

According to five Jewish American activists who witnessed the attack, reports the Guardian, Hamdan Ballal was surrounded and attacked by a group of about 15 armed settlers.

“They started throwing stones towards Palestinians and destroyed a water tank near Hamdan’s house,” said one of the activists from the Center for Jewish Nonviolence.

These Jewish witnesses said that a group of soldiers arrived at the scene alongside the other settlers, who were also dressed in military uniform, and they chased Ballal to his house and handed him over to the military.

‘‘The settlers destroyed his car with stones and slashed one of the tyres,’’ another witness, Raviv, told the Guardian. ‘‘All the windows and windshields were broken.’’

Hardly the first time...

This is not the first time that directors and member of crew of No Other Land have been attacked by settlers, as Adra said.

Last February, Adra was also surrounded and attacked by masked Israeli settlers.

Earlier on Monday, 24 March, Adra wrote on X that “armed and masked settlers” were “leading a terror attack on Masafer Yatta”.

“Dozens of settlers arrived at my friend Naser’s house in Susya, throwing stones at his home, smashing his vehicle, and slashing [the vehicle’s tyres with knives],” he reported.

“We risked our life to film,” he said.

“Soldiers are ordering us to stay inside our homes in the village, while those who attack and could’ve slaughtered the residents in their homes roam freely, masked, around the village.”


The West Bank

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast War, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for their future state and view Israel’s settler colonialism as a major obstacle to a two-state solution.

Israel has built well over 100 settlements in the Occupied Territories, home to over 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering 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 original residents, mostly Arab Bedouin, to be expelled.

Around 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, but soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards — and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.

During the war in Gaza, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank in wide-scale military operations, and there has also been a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians.

There has also been a surge in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

With AP/PTI inputs

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