An Oscar-winning director was attacked and abducted in “revenge” for highlighting the plight of displaced Palestinians in the West Bank, his colleagues have claimed.
Hamdan Ballal, co-director of ‘No Other Land’, was attending a gathering for the end of the daily Ramadan fast near Hebron on Monday, when a group of settlers reportedly attacked. Ballal was dragged from an ambulance by the mob, according to co-director Yuval Abraham. Israeli police arrested three men, including Ballal, who was injured during the clashes.
Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes as he was escorted from the police station, according to witnesses. He was driven to a hospital in the neighboring Palestinian city of Hebron, alongside two others.
On Tuesday, Abraham said: “After being handcuffed all night and beaten in a military base, Hamdan Ballal is now free and is about to go home to his family.”
Basel Adra, another co-director, witnessed the arrest and shared a picture of Ballal being treated in hospital after he was released.
“We came back from the Oscars and every day since there is an attack on us,” Adra said. “This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment.”
On Monday, Abraham shared dashcam footage on X that he said showed masked settlers who attacked Ballal. In the night-time clip you can see shadowy figures in the background before a woman holding a mobile phone flees. A masked man then hurls a brick at the camera and it cuts to black.
Lamia Ballal, the director’s wife, said she heard her husband being beaten outside their home as she huddled inside with their three children. She heard him screaming, “I’m dying” and calling for an ambulance.
When she looked out the window, she says she saw three men in uniform beating Ballal with the butts of their rifles and another person in civilian clothes who appeared to be filming the violence.
“Of course, after the Oscar, they have come to attack us more,” Lamia said. “I felt afraid.”
The Israeli military said it detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at forces and one Israeli civilian involved in a “violent confrontation” between Israelis and Palestinians — a claim witnesses disputed.
The military said it had transferred them to Israeli police for questioning and had evacuated an Israeli citizen from the area to receive medical treatment.
“No Other Land” follows Adra as he risks arrest to document the destruction of Masafer Yatta at the southern edge of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, joined by his co-director, Israeli journalist and filmmaker Abraham.
The critically acclaimed documentary, filmed over five years, depicts the alliance that develops between Adra and Abraham.
In his acceptance speech, Adra called on the world “to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.”
He said he hoped his newborn daughter would “not have to live the same life I am living now … Always feeling settler violence, home demolitions and forceful displacement.”