Brother of No Other Land co-director injured as Israeli settlers attack family home again | West Bank

The co-director of the Oscar-winning No Other Land said his home and family were attacked again, almost a year after the documentary about Israeli settler and army violence in the West Bank was received. An Academy Award.

Hamdan Ballal said a group of settlers who had been waging a long-running campaign of harassment against Palestinian villagers came to his home in Susya, in the Masafer Yatta area on the southern edge of the West Bank.

Ballal, one of the documentary’s four directors, said that since an Israeli court order banning non-residents from the area two weeks before – in a rare legal victory for Palestinian villagers – he had called the police. Two soldiers came instead, accompanied by a local settler leader.

“The army came first and immediately raided our house and attacked everyone inside,” Ballal said as he stood outside his concrete cottage halfway up a rocky hill.

Last March, Ballal (36) was. injured in a settler attack shortly after No Other Land was awarded an Oscar. On Sunday, he was not at home, but the settler targeted his brother Mohammed instead, he said.

“He gave the soldiers the order, and then they called my brother and pushed him to the ground and asked for his ID,” Ballal said. “One of them held my brother around his neck and squeezed very, very hard so that my brother couldn’t breathe. His face turned blue and my nephews when they saw it were afraid he was going to die, so they took him straight to the hospital.”

Mohammed Ballal was put on oxygen and treated for trauma to his neck and bruises.

Relatives in a nearby village who got news of the attack and made their way to the Ballals’ home were intercepted by the army. Two of the director’s brothers, a nephew and a cousin were handcuffed and blindfolded for three hours in a nearby army base, Ballal said, before being released at night on a road used by settlers, putting them at risk.

An Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokesman confirmed the arrests but denied the attack.

“On Sunday evening, IDF soldiers detained a number of Palestinians adjacent to the area of ​​Susya, after they refused to identify themselves to the soldiers. A short time after they were detained, the Palestinians were released,” the spokesman said. “We emphasize that, contrary to the allegations, IDF soldiers did not assault them and did not raid their home.”

No Other Land, which won the academy award for best documentary last year, depicts the destruction of Palestinian communities in Masafer Yatta, in the southern Hebron hills, by Israeli settlers acting with the complicity and support of the Israeli army.

The brutality of the treatment of Palestinian villagers shocked audiences around the world and shined a light on a campaign of settlement building, intimidation of Palestinians and village clearances across the West Bank, led by extremist members of the Israeli cabinet. Human rights groups and a UN special rapporteur completed the campaign “ethnic cleansing“.

The Israeli government opened a land registry for the West Bank on Sunday, allowing Israelis to stake ownership claims on the occupied territory for the first time since the registration process was frozen after the 1967 war, when Israel captured the territory from Jordan.

The move appeared to be in direct violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its own civilian population to occupied territory.

It was one of a series of government measures in recent days, aimed at tightening Israel’s grip on the West Bank, that were pulled rebuke from around the world and a reminder from the Trump administration that, despite its strong support for Israel, it opposes the annexation of the West Bank.

“The situation has become worse,” Ballal told reporters in Susya on Tuesday. He pointed to a recent attack on another village in Masafer Yatta, in which a group of settlers raided a Palestinian barn and killed the sheep and lambs inside. The attack was recorded on video.

“All the people living in Masafer Yatta are farmers. They have to plant their land and graze their sheep to live,” he said. He added that the army prevented them from plowing fields that would have provided vegetables and fodder for livestock in the winter, and coordinated with settlers to prevent Palestinians from grazing their sheep. “It’s not a life anymore,” he said.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported last week that the Israeli army, at the behest of settlers, issued orders for troops to prevent Palestinians from plowing their fields, declared closed agricultural areas military zones, and used crowd dispersal techniques and detentions to drive Palestinian farmers off their land.

In July 2024 the international court of law decided that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and the building of settlements were illegal. It called on Israel to leave the occupied territories promptly and ruled that Palestinians are owed compensation for the 57 years of occupation.

Ballal said the recent government measures only make official what has long been a harsh reality for the people of Masafer Yatta.

“These laws, these decisions, are new to the media, but they are nothing new to us,” he said. He said the worldwide publicity his film has attracted has not changed anything for the better for the people of Masafer Yatta and the West Bank as a whole, but he hopes it will contribute to a generational change in international attitudes.

“We hope the new generation can change (policy), but that will be in the future,” he said. “Some of those who watch the film and know the truth, the government or diplomacy can (step in) and do something and maybe stop this in the future.”