JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli settlers beat up one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning documentary film
No Other Land on Monday in the occupied West Bank before he was detained by the Israeli military, according to two of his fellow directors and other witnesses.
The filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was one of three Palestinians detained in the village of Susiya, according to attorney Lea Tsemel, who is representing them. Police told her they were being held at a military base for medical treatment, but she said Tuesday morning that she had not been able to reach them and had no further information on their whereabouts.
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. Soldiers who arrived pointed their guns at the Palestinians, while 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.”
The Israeli military said it detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at forces and one Israeli civilian involved in a “violent confrontation” between Israelis and Palestinians — a claim witnesses interviewed by the AP disputed. The military said it had transferred them 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. 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 theater that screened the documentary.
Adra said that settlers entered the village Monday evening shortly after residents broke the daily fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. 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.
