Oscar-winning Palestinian director is attacked by Israeli settlers and
detained by the army
[March 25, 2025]
By JULIA FRANKEL
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.
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Hamdan Ballal, Palestinian co-director of Oscar-winning documentary
No Other Land, is detained by the Israeli military from his home in
the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Monday, March 24, 2025. (Raviv Rose
via AP)
 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.
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 settlement growth as a major
obstacle to a two-state solution.
Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to over 500,000
settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in
the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule,
with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering
population centers.
The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the southern West
Bank as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered
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 during wide-scale military operations, and there
has also been a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians. There has
been a surge in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
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