Israeli forces on Monday night arrested a creator of the Oscar-winning documentary film “No Other Land” after he was reportedly injured during clashes between settlers and Palestinians in the southern West Bank village of Susya.
Palestinian reports and eyewitnesses said dozens of settlers attacked the village, throwing stones at residents, cars and houses. According to the police, Palestinians responded by throwing stones back.
Alongside Hamdan Ballal, two other Palestinians were arrested on suspicion of stone-throwing while an Israeli suspected of taking part in the violence was also detained.
The Israel Defense Forces said the violence began “after a number of terrorists threw rocks toward Israeli citizens and struck their cars” near Susya.
Footage from the village showed a masked individual throwing stones and attacking Palestinians, and hitting the car of activists who had come to assist the residents. An activist with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, Josh Kimelman, told the Associated Press that the settlers attacked their cars to make them flee the area.
According to a Palestinian at the scene, a Palestinian vehicle was also damaged by stones.
Four Palestinians were injured by stones, most of them lightly, eyewitnesses said. The military said an Israeli citizen wounded in the clashes was taken for medical treatment.
According to the IDF, when troops arrived “to disperse the conflict, a number of terrorists began throwing stones toward the security forces.” Soldiers then arrested Ballal and the other suspects.
Attorney Lea Tsemel said police told her that Ballal and the other detainees were being held at a military base for medical treatment and that she has not been able to speak with them.
Basel Adra, a co-director of “No Other Land,” which chronicles Israel’s demolition of Masafer Yatta, a Palestinian West Bank village in a designated IDF live-fire training zone, witnessed Balla’s detention. Adra said around two dozen settlers — some masked, some carrying guns, some in Israeli uniform — attacked the village.
“We came back from the Oscars and every day since there is an attack on us,” Adra told The Associated Press. “This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment.”
Adra said the settlers entered Susya shortly after residents broke the daily fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. A settler — who according to Adra frequently attacks the village — walked over to Ballal’s home with the military, and soldiers shot in the air. Ballal’s wife heard her husband being beaten outside and scream “I’m dying,” according to Adra.
Adra then saw the soldiers lead Ballal, handcuffed and blindfolded, from his home into a military vehicle. Speaking to the AP by phone, he said Ballal’s blood was still splattered on the ground outside his own front door.
Yuval Abraham, one of the film’s Israeli directors, posted on X that a “group of settlers” had set upon Ballal.
“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,” Abraham wrote.
In its statement, the IDF denied any of the Palestinians were arrested in an ambulance.
Located in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills, Susya is one of many Palestinian villages that have come under increasing duress by settlers from nearby outposts in recent years.
A massive uptick in settler attacks in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught prompted former US president Joe Biden’s administration to issue a spate of sanctions against West Bank settlers, in light of Israeli authorities’ apparent neglect to deal with the issue. The sanctions were rolled back by US President Donald Trump soon after he took office.
Many of the formerly sanctioned individuals live on outposts in the South Hebron Hills.