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Published : 25 Mar 2025, 09:01 PM
The Oscar-winning director of a documentary on the Israel-Palestinian conflict was arrested late on Monday after being injured during a raid by Israeli settlers on his village in the occupied West Bank, a local official who was present said.
Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the award-winning "No Other Land", was attending a gathering for Iftar, the end of the daily Ramadan fast, at Susiya village near Hebron, when a group of settlers attacked the gathering, said Jihad Nawajaa, head of the Susiya local council.
"Dozens of settlers attacked the gathering at Iftar," Nawajaa told Reuters by phone. "The young men came out to prevent them, and there were about eight injuries on our side."
Israeli police arrested three men, including Ballal, who was injured during the standoff, he said.
"This is not the first time that the settlers attacked our gathering, but in the recent period the attacks have increased," he said, adding that the settlers had stolen around 10 sheep from the village during the attack.
Monday's incident was the latest in which Israeli settlers have been accused of raiding Palestinian or Bedouin villages and encampments in the West Bank, sometimes to steal livestock. Palestinians and activists who monitor such attacks say the police and army typically stand by without intervening.
Lamia Ballal, the filmmaker's wife, said settlers had gathered around the family house and her husband had gone outside to prevent them from breaking in.
"The settlers attacked him and started beating him, and then they arrested him, we do not know anything about him," she told Reuters.
Anna Lippman, an American-Canadian from a group called the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, said her group had been attacked by settlers after arriving in the village around 15 minutes after the attack began.
"Shortly after we were attacked, Hamdan was blindfolded and handcuffed," she said, adding that other activists had seen him being led to a military vehicle and driven off.
She said the family had shown patches of blood on the ground where it said Ballal had been hit.
"TARGETED"
The Israeli military said police and soldiers intervened after Palestinians threw rocks at the vehicles of Israeli citizens and later at Israeli security forces.
"In response, the forces apprehended three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at them, as well as an Israeli civilian involved in the violent confrontation," it said in a statement.
It denied reports that at least one of the Palestinians was arrested in an ambulance.
Asked for an update on Ballal's condition and status on Tuesday, the Israeli police sent the statement first issued by the army the previous night.
"No Other Land," a film about Israeli displacement of a Palestinian community, co-directed by Palestinian and Israeli directors, won the Oscar at this year's Academy Awards. It was not immediately clear whether Ballal had been singled out because of the film.
Basel Adra, one of the film's other co-directors, said he believed the settlers had taken the army to the family house as revenge for the film's depiction of the Masafer Yatta area near to where Monday's incident occurred.
"Because he carries his camera and documents what is going on, I think he is targeted and he was avenged this way at night," he said.
European countries and the previous US administration of President Joe Biden have imposed sanctions on violent Israeli settlers but under President Donald Trump, the White House has removed them.
