Oscar-winning Palestinian director attacked by Israeli settlers who were released after arrest

Oscar-winning Palestinian director attacked by Israeli settlers who were released after arrest

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Key Points
  • Oscar-winning filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was attacked by Israeli settlers on the occupied West Bank.
  • Ballal’s lawyer says he has been held and folded at night without charging.
  • Jewish activists say that Israeli settlers have attacked them in the same village.
The Oscar-winning director of a documentary about the Israel-Palestinian conflict was released on Tuesday from detention, one day after he was injured and arrested during a raid by Israeli settlers in his village in the occupied West Bank.
Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the award-winning no other country, said he had been attacked by settlers after he had filmed that she was attacking a neighbor’s house and then returning to ensure that his own house was not attacked.
“I just waited outside [to see] When a settlers or a single army attacked my house, “he told Reuters’s news agency after he was released from the police custody.
He said he had been pushed to the ground while soldiers were shouting at him to get up and pointed their weapons to him.

“It’s crazy, you can introduce your family, your children in the house and you have to protect them,” he said.

Shortly before the incident, in which he was eventually arrested by Israeli security forces, a group of settlers attacked Atar, the end of the Daily Ramadan Fast, in Susiya village near Hebron.
“Dozens of settlers attacked the meeting in iftar,” Jihad Nawajaa, head of the Susiya municipal council, told Reuters by telephone.
“The young men came out to prevent them, and there were about eight injuries on our side.”
The Israeli police arrested three men, including Ballal, who were injured during the impasse.

“This is not the first time that the settlers attacked our meeting, but the attacks increased in the recent period,” said Nawajaa, adding that the settlers had stolen about 10 sheep from the village during the attack.

Hamdan Ballal (left) won an Oscar for the best documentary feature film for no other country. Source: AFP / Monica Schipper

Monday’s incident was the last in which Israeli settlers were accused of the robberies of Palestinian or Bedouin villages and camps on the West Bank, sometimes to steal cattle.

Palestinians and activists who follow such attacks say that the police and the army are usually without intervening.
Lamia Ballal, the filmmaker’s wife, said that settlers had gathered around the family home and had gone outside to prevent them from breaking in.
“The settlers attacked him and started beating him, and then they arrested him,” she told Reuters.
Anna Lippman, an American-Canadian of the Center for Jewish non-violence, said her group had been attacked by settlers after arriving in the village about 15 minutes after the fighting started.
The Israeli army said that the police and soldiers intervened after Palestinians threw stones at the vehicles of Israeli civilians and later in Israeli security forces.

Asked for an update about the state and status of Ballal on Tuesday, the Israeli police sent the statement that was first published by the army the previous night.

No other country, a film about the Israeli relocation of a Palestinian community, co -directed by Palestinian and Israeli directors, won the Oscar for the best documentary during this year’s Academy Awards.
Ballal said that one of the settlers who took the attack was known to him.
“He attacked my house many times and has also grazed his cows in the garden of my house,” he said.

Basel Adra, one of the other co-director of the film, said he believed that the settlers had brought the army to the family house as revenge for the image of the film of the Masafer Yatta area near where the incident of Monday took place.

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