Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian co-director of the documentary “No Other Land” in the occupied West Bank on Monday, two of his fellow directors and other witnesses said.
According to lawyer Lee Tzemel, filmmaker Hamdan Ballal is one of three Palestinians being held in the village of Suzia. Police told her they were being held in an army camp for medical treatment, and she said she was unable to speak to them.
Another co-director, Basel Adra, witnessed the detention and said about two dozen settlers — some wearing masks, some carrying guns, some in Israeli uniforms — attacked the village. The soldiers who arrived pointed their guns at the Palestinians, and the settlers continued to throw stones.
“We just came back from the Oscars and we are being attacked every day,” Adra told The Associated Press. “This could be their revenge on us for making the film. It feels like punishment.”
The Israeli military said it detained three Palestinians suspected of throwing stones at troops and an Israeli civilian involved in “violent clashes” between Israelis and Palestinians — witnesses interviewed by the AP disputed that. The army said they were transferred to Israeli police for questioning and that an Israeli citizen was evacuated from the area to receive medical treatment.
“No Other Land,” which won this year’s Oscar for best documentary, chronicles the struggle of residents of the Masfar Yatta area to prevent the Israeli army from demolishing their village. Both Ballal and Adra from Masfar Yatta made a joint Palestinian-Israeli production with Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Soar.
The film, which will debut at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024, has won a string of international awards. It has sparked outrage in Israel and abroad, such as when a Miami Beach movie theater that screened the documentary proposed terminating the lease.
Adra said the residents entered the village on Monday evening, shortly after residents broke their daily fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. According to Adra, a resident who often attacks the village walked with the army to Ballal’s house, and the soldiers fired into the air. According to Adra, Ballal’s wife heard her husband being beaten from outside and shouting “I am dying.”
Adra then saw soldiers handcuffing and blindfolding Ballal from his house and taking him to 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 Adra’s account was corroborated by another eyewitness who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
A group of 10-20 masked settlers attacked the Jewish Center for Nonviolence activists with rocks and sticks, smashing their car windows and slashing tires as they fled the area, activist Josh Kimmelman told the AP.
A video provided by the Jewish Center for Nonviolence showed two activists in a dusty field at night, shoving a masked settler and punching him in the arm. The activists ran back to their car when they heard stones being thrown at the vehicle.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians want all three for their future state and see settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution.
Israel has built more than 100 settlements, home to more than 500,000 Israeli-citizen settlers. In the West Bank, 3 million Palestinians live under open Israeli military rule, while the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administers the population centers.
In the 1980s, the Israeli military designated Masfar Yatta in the southern West Bank as a live-fire training zone and ordered the eviction of the settlers, mostly Arab Bedouins. About 1,000 settlers remain, but soldiers regularly come to demolish homes, tents, water tanks, and olive groves, and Palestinians fear that a complete eviction could occur at any time.
During the war in Gaza, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank in large-scale military operations, and settler attacks against Palestinians have also increased. There has been an increase in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.
