Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal has been freed after allegedly being beaten by Israeli settlers and detained by the Israeli military, according to his No Other Land co-director, Yuval Abraham.
“Hamdan Ballal is free and is about to go home to his family,” Abraham posted Tuesday on X.
Ballal’s release comes hours after activists said a group of settlers attacked his home village of Susya in the occupied West Bank, beating him and destroying property.
It was afterward, when he was being treated in an ambulance, that he and a second Palestinian man were taken into custody by authorities, the activist group Center for Jewish Nonviolence said.
Leah Zemel, a lawyer representing the detainees, said she was informed that they were being held in a military center for medical treatment ahead of questioning but had not been given a reason for their detention, per The New York Times.
The Israeli military claimed in a statement that “several terrorists” had hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, causing damage to vehicles near Susya. The attack prompted a “violent confrontation” that involved “mutual rock hurling between Palestinians and Israelis,” the statement said.
The statement added that when they arrived, along with police, the “terrorists” threw rocks at them.
Three Palestinians and an Israeli civilian were detained “for further questioning by the Israel police,” the statement said.
Ballal’s No Other Land co-director, Abraham, originally wrote about the attack on X on Monday, claiming that Ballal had sustained head and stomach injuries. “They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding,” Abraham wrote.
The violence comes as Israeli forces continue their offensive in Gaza after talks to extend the temporary cease-fire deal that went into effect in mid-January came to a stalemate. The Israeli military took control of additional territory and issued new evacuation orders to residents who had just recently returned to their homes.
No Other Land, co-directed by Ballal, Abraham, Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli director Rachel Szor, depicts the destruction of the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers and the alliance that develops between Adra and Abraham.
It went on to win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the March ceremony.
“We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger. We see each other,” Abraham said in a powerful acceptance speech.
“The atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end. The Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of October 7, which must be freed. When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law. Basel is under military laws that destroy his life, and he cannot control. There is a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people.”
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