A Palestinian director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” was beaten bloody near his home by Israeli settlers and detained by the Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank on Monday evening, witnesses said.
The director, Hamdan Ballal, was set upon in Susya, his home village, by at least 20 masked people, mostly teenagers armed with rocks, sticks and knives, according to Joseph Kaplan Weinger, 26, who said he had come upon the attack after it began. Mr. Weinger is part of a volunteer initiative that provides protection in areas vulnerable to settler violence.
It was not clear what prompted the attack, but Mr. Weinger, who is also a doctoral student in sociology at the University of California in Los Angeles, said the group had descended on Susya, which is south of Hebron, and assaulted West Bank residents as they were breaking the fast during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Some mockingly shouted holiday blessings as they did so, he said.
Mr. Weinger said that he began honking the car horn in an attempt to alert nearby Israeli soldiers to the attack, but that the Israeli forces prevented him and two companions from reaching Mr. Ballal’s home.
“Soldiers just stood around,” he said. “Later, when we got there, we saw his blood on the ground.”
Mr. Ballal, 37, was one of three Palestinians detained, according to witnesses and the Israeli military. Leah Zemel, a lawyer representing the detainees, said that she had been informed that they were being held in a military center for medical treatment ahead of questioning, but that she did not know the reason for their detention.
The Israeli military said in a statement that “several terrorists” had hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles near Susya and prompting a “violent confrontation” that involved “mutual rock hurling between Palestinians and Israelis.” The military said that when its forces and the police arrived, “terrorists” threw rocks at them.
Three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks, as well as an Israeli civilian, were detained “for further questioning by the Israel police,” the statement said. An Israeli was injured and was transported to receive medical treatment, it said.
The assault on Mr. Ballal came as the Israeli military has been conducting intense raids in the West Bank, in what it says is an effort to crack down on militant groups. Since January, the operation, focused on the northern West Bank, has forced more than 40,000 Palestinians to flee their homes— the biggest displacement of civilians in the territory since the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, historians say.
Mr. Ballal was among four directors — the others were Basel Adra, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham — in a Palestinian-Israeli collective that picked up the Academy Award for best documentary this month. The film documents the demolition of West Bank residents’ homes in or near the village of Masafer Yatta, where Mr. Adra is from, by Israeli forces claiming the area for a live-fire military training ground.
The documentary captured the destruction between 2019 and 2023 and in archival footage. It was released last year amid Israeli expansion of West Bank settlements, which have been encouraged by the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. With the expansion has come a documented rise in Jewish settler violence against Palestinians, according to the United Nations agency for humanitarian coordination, which tracks violent episodes in the area.
Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, reported that settlers had stormed Masafer Yatta hours before the directors won their Oscar.
Susya has also been in a protracted legal battle with the Israeli government over plans for its destruction and moves to remove residents in an area that Israel has deemed an archaeological site.
Mr. Weinger, who has spent the past several months in the South Hebron Hills, said that during Ramadan, attacks in the area have become increasingly frequent. “Nearly every day, there’s something,” he said.
Mr. Adra, the other Palestinian director of the film, said on social media that he arrived in Susya shortly after the violence broke out Monday evening to see masked assailants hurling stones. Israeli soldiers then arrived, but rather than arresting the attackers, he said, they pointed their rifles at the Palestinians and began to head in their direction.
Mr. Adra said he scattered with others from the scene, and later saw soldiers taking Mr. Ballal away.
Chase Carter, a spokesman for the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, which connects Jewish activists with Palestinians in the West Bank for documentation and human rights work, said that five Jewish American activists who went to the scene to document the attack were assaulted by settlers. The settlers used rocks to smash the car with the activists inside, he said.
On social media, Mr. Adra recalled that it was only a few weeks ago that he, Mr. Ballal, and the Israeli creators of the film were being feted at the Oscars.
“But we always knew we’d have to return to this reality as, unfortunately, the world isn’t helping to end the occupation,” he said.
Alissa Wilkinson, Aaron Boxerman and Natan Odenheimer contributed reporting.
