Palestinian director of Oscar-winning film beaten by Israeli settlers and troops

Masafer Yatta, Palestine - One of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, Hamdan Ballal, is missing after being violently attacked by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the illegally occupied West Bank.

Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was beaten, detained, and kidnapped by Israeli settlers and soldiers.
Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was beaten, detained, and kidnapped by Israeli settlers and soldiers.  © Monica Schipper / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

Activists and observers reported that Israeli soldiers took the injured Palestinian filmmaker out of an ambulance and detained him.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that four Palestinians, including Ballal, were injured in an attack by settlers in the village of Susya, near Hebron. Armed settlers accompanied by soldiers trashed the village's residents, houses, and cars.

Ballal was reportedly hit in the head by a stone and then taken to an Israeli army base, where he was "handcuffed and blindfolded all night... while two soldiers beat him up on the floor," according to his No Other Land co-director, the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham.

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In a statement, the Israeli military said that three Palestinian suspects, as well as an Israeli civilian, had been detained, but denied that a Palestinian had been "apprehended from inside an ambulance."

Abraham posted a brief video on X showing masked men running towards the camera, one of them throwing a rock at it and the screen going black.

"The group of armed KKK-like masked settlers that lynched No Other Land director Hamdan Ballal (still missing), caught here on camera," the post read.

Basel Adra, one of the film's directors and stars, told the Associated Press the attack felt like "revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment.”

No Other Land is an Israeli-Palestinian documentary about the demolition of Palestinian villages in the West Bank.

Earlier this month the film won the Oscar for best documentary. It also won the Panorama Audience Award and the Berlinale Documentary Film Award, among other nods.

Amid a renewed genocidal assault on Gaza, Israel has ramped up the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, where its occupation and settlement policies have been declared a war crime by the UN.

UPDATE, March 25, 10:50 AM: Ballal "is now free"

According to a post by Yuval Abraham on X, Ballal was released from detention on Tuesday, after "being handcuffed all night and beaten in a military base."

The filmmaker and photographer "is about to go home to his family," Abraham added.

Two other Palestinians detained by Israeli forces in Monday's settler rampage were also released.

Cover photo: Monica Schipper / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

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