JERUSALEM (RNS) — Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” was injured by Jewish settlers in the West Bank on Monday night (March 24) and subsequently detained by Israeli security forces, his co-director said.
Yuval Abraham, one of the film’s four Israeli and Palestinian co-directors, said on social media that a group of settlers “lynched” Ballal, leaving him with injuries to his head and stomach. The Israeli journalist said “soldiers invaded the ambulance that (Ballal) called and took him. No sign of him since.”
Ballal was released on Tuesday, his lawyer said.
The Israel Defense Forces issued a different account of the events.
“Last night several terrorists hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles near Susya,” the IDF said in a statement. “Following this, a violent confrontation broke out, involving mutual rock-hurling between Palestinians and Israelis at the scene.”
When the IDF and Israeli police arrived “to disperse the confrontation, several terrorists began hurling rocks at the security forces.” The forces apprehended three Palestinians — including Ballal — “suspected of hurling rocks at them, as well as an Israeli civilian involved in the violent confrontation. Contrary to claims, no Palestinian was apprehended from inside an ambulance,” the statement said.
The West Bank village of Susya is where Ballal lives. Basel Adra, the film’s other Palestinian director, told The Associated Press that about two dozen young Jewish settlers, some of them teenagers and many of them masked, pelted Palestinian villagers with rocks.
When IDF soldiers arrived, “soldiers pointed their guns at the Palestinians, while settlers continued throwing stones,” the AP reported.
Adra said settlers have ramped up their attacks on Susya and other Palestinian villages since the film won an Academy Award on March 2.
“We came back from the Oscars and every day since there is an attack on us,” said Adra, who is from Masafer Yatta, the subject of the film. “This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment.”
The documentary chronicles the Israeli government’s attempts to displace Palestinians from Masafer Yatta, an area south of Hebron in the West Bank composed of several small Palestinian enclaves. Israel has used the area for military training since the 1970s.
Critics of the film say it depicts Israelis as violent while ignoring decades of Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians, killing thousands. Its supporters say it shines a light on Israel’s state-sanctioned settlement expansion in the West Bank.
A Feb. 26 report by Oxfam, a British nongovernmental organization focused on poverty, found that more than 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from the West Bank since a temporary ceasefire in Gaza came into force on Jan. 19. The report said it was the highest number of displaced Palestinians from the West Bank since Israel captured the territory from Jordan during the 1967 war.
Mustafa Tamaizeh, economic justice development manager and West Bank response lead for Oxfam, said in a statement with the report that Israel was “pursuing this destruction with full impunity while aiding and abetting illegal Israeli settlers to attack Palestinian communities.”
Israel, however, insists the goal of Operation Iron Wall, the military operation it launched in the West Bank on Jan. 21, is designed to prevent armed Palestinian groups, including Hamas, from attacking Israel, as it did during the first and second intifadas, or uprisings. The military operation has become the longest such Israeli campaign in the West Bank since the second intifada, according to the International Crisis Group, a global NGO.
While only a small fraction — an estimated few hundred to 3,000 or 4,000 — of the West Bank’s 500,000 settlers are confrontational or violent, according to organizations that monitor the situation, they have become bolder and more dangerous in recent years.
Arik Ascherman, director of the Israeli human rights organization Torat Tzedek-Torah of Justice, identified three milestones that have empowered the settler fringe. The first was the November 2022 election of the current Israeli government, led by right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly capitulated to demands from his far-right-wing pro-settlement coalition partners. The second was the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre. The third was the election of President Donald Trump in the United States.
Since the Oct. 7 massacre, “even Israelis who were somewhat supportive of Palestinian rights may be unwilling to support them now. Some are angry at all Palestinians,” Ascherman told RNS. “They are giving settlers free rein to carry out attacks.”
And Trump’s election and his decision to immediately cancel President Joe Biden’s sanctions against violent settlers has led them to feel “they are untouchable,” Ascherman said.
