Jerusalem, Undefined – Israeli police on Tuesday released Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, detained a day earlier for “hurling rocks” following what activists described as an attack by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Adra late on Monday shared a photo showing what he said was the moment Ballal was taken into custody “injured and bleeding”.
Yuval Abraham, who co-directed “No Other Land” with Adra and Ballal, said that a “group of settlers” had attacked and “beat him”.
Ballal “has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him,” Abraham wrote.
Activists from the anti-occupation group Center for Jewish Nonviolence said they witnessed the violence in Susya first-hand while they were there on what they call “protective presence” to deter settler violence.
Jenna, an American activist who declined to share her full name out of security concerns, told AFP that she saw Israeli forces putting Hamdan and two other Palestinians into a police car.
She said that before Israeli forces arrived, a group of “15 to 20 settlers” had attacked the activists as well as Ballal’s house in the village.
“This type of violence is happening on a regular basis,” she added.
Attacks on the rise
The Israeli military said three Palestinians had been apprehended in the Susya area for “hurling rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles”.
“Following this, a violent confrontation broke out, involving mutual rock hurling between Palestinians and Israelis”, with “terrorists… hurling rocks” at Israeli forces who arrived at the scene, the military statement said.
Susya is located near Masafer Yatta, a grouping of hamlets south of Hebron city where “No Other Land” is set.
The best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards follows Adra and Abraham, telling the story of forced displacement of Palestinians by Israeli troops and settlers in Masafer Yatta — an area Israel had declared a restricted military zone in the 1980s.
Foreign activists regularly stay in Masafer Yatta’s communities to engage in “protective presence”, which entails accompanying Palestinians as they tend to their crops or shepherd their sheep, and document instances of settler violence.
Rights groups have said that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza — a separate Palestinian territory — there has been a spike in attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Occupied by Israel since 1967, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.
