Oscar-winning Palestinian director arrested by Israeli military in West Bank

25 March 2025, 00:00 | Updated: 25 March 2025, 04:51

Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal was attacked and beaten up by Israeli settlers in the West Bank and was later arrested, activists say.

Just three weeks ago, Ballal was on stage in Los Angeles accepting an Oscar for the film he co-directed, No Other Land - a collaborative effort between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers.

Israeli settlers beat up Ballal in the occupied West Bank on Monday, and he was then detained by the Israeli military, a number of Jewish American activists who witnessed the attack have said.

Dozens of masked settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta area, destroying property, said the activist group Centre for Jewish Nonviolence.

Ballal’s house was attacked by the masked settlers, and 15 of the armed assailants then surrounded him, leaving his head bleeding, the activists said.

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The witnesses said soldiers from the Israeli military arrived alongside armed settlers dressed in military clothing, who chased Ballal to his house and then handed him over to the military. Ballal has not been seen since.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident but did not immediately comment.

Basel Adra, one of No Other Land’s co-directors, also witnessed the attack on Ballal.

“I'm standing with Karam, Hamdan's 7 year old son, near the blood of Hamdan's in his house, after settlers lynched him,” Adra wrote on X.

“Hamdan, co-director of our film No Other Land, is still missing after soldiers abducted him, injured and bleeding. This is how they erase Masafer Yatta,” he added.

Israeli co-director Yuval Abraham also posted on X: “A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co director of our film no other land.

"They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since."

Directors of No Other Land have been attacked in the same way before. In February, Adra was surrounded and beaten up by armed and masked settlers in a similar fashion.

A number of Jewish American activists witnessed the scene, but were forced to flee after the settlers started attacking them.

"We don't know where Hamdan is because he was taken away in a blindfold," said 28-year-old Josh Kimelman, who was at the scene.

A group of 10-20 masked settlers attacked Kimelman and other Jewish activists with stones and sticks, and smashed their car windows and slashed their tyres.

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A terrifying video provided by the Centre for Jewish Nonviolence showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists from the group in a dusty field at night.

The activists rush back to their car.

"Get in, get in," one shouts, and they duck inside as the thuds of rocks being thrown can be heard.

"Car window was broken," the driver says as they drive off.

Another video shows a group of armed and masked settlers rushing towards the car, and throwing a stone at what appears to be the windshield.

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No Other Land, which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of Masafer Yatta to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages.

It has two Palestinian co-directors, Ballal and Basel Adra, both residents of Masafar Yatta, and two Israeli directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The joint Palestinian-Israeli production 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 briefly proposed ending the lease of a cinema that screened the documentary.

The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta 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.

The West Bank, which is not controlled by Hamas, and has been under military occupation by Israel since 1967, normally houses around three million Palestinians.

Most of these people are descendants of Palestinian refugees forced to flee their homes in modern-day Israel after several wars with the country.

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 that are now home to more than 500,000 settlers with Israeli citizenship.

The three million Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centres.

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.

Conversely, there has also been an uptick in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.