Israeli co-director of the Oscar-winning said Ballal was attacked and wounded by settlers. Israeli soldiers removed him from an ambulance while he was receiving treatment, witnesses say. The IDF is yet to respond
Dozens of settlers in the West Bank attacked Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the Oscar-winning film ‘No Other Land,’ wounding him and others, according to activists at the scene and Israeli co-director Yuval Abraham.
While Ballal was being evacuated by ambulance for treatment, Israeli soldiers stopped the vehicle and arrested him. According to residents, the soldiers who detained him were members of a rapid-response unit composed of settlers from nearby settlements. The unit then handed him over to other soldiers.
The IDF has not responded to reports of the attack.
Yuval Abraham, Israeli co-director of the film, wrote on X that Ballal was “lynched,” and has wounds to his head and stomach. He said it remains unclear where he is or if he is receiving medical treatment.
The attack began around 6 P.M. near a school in the village of Susya, where Ballal is from. A settler approached Palestinian homes, and when residents asked him to leave, dozens of settlers arrived and attacked them with stones and blows with their fists.
The settlers destroyed water tanks, stole security cameras, and smashed car windows. When soldiers arrived, the settlers fled. American activists at the scene called the police, but said officers did not intervene.
The 2024 film No Other Land documents life in the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta region under abuse by Israeli authorities and settlers. The documentary is the directorial debut of Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor, an Israeli-Palestinian collective of four activists.
Last March, when the film was screened in Masafer Yatta in the south Hebron hills, Ballal wrote in a column for +972 Magazine about living with settler violence. “For years, Basel and I have filmed Israeli home demolitions and settler violence in Masafer Yatta. It can be draining, filming these horrible incidents every day,” he wrote.
“As Basel says at one point in the film to Yuval, one of the film’s Jewish Israeli producers and subjects, ‘You can’t expect the occupation to end in 10 days.’ But sometimes it feels as though no one knows what is happening here, and nothing will change.”
No Other Land raised an outcry in Israel following the winners’ speeches at the Berlin International Film Festival calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and pleading with the German government to stop supplying weapons to Israel.
- Photo: Basel Adra, from left, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal, and Yuval Abraham, winners of the Oscar for best documentary feature film for “No Other Land.”Credit: Jordan Strauss/AP