On Tuesday, the Israeli police interrogated a Palestinian director of a documentary winner of the Oscar, according to the authorities and his lawyer, after the witnesses reported that the Israeli settlers attacked him near his home on the western Israeli occasion.
The police held Hamdan Ball, 37 years old, one of the directors of the film, “no other land” and two other Palestinians on charges of launching stones to Israeli vehicles and hurting a settler – accusations that all deny, according to Leah Tsemel, a lawyer who represents the dehanas.
A settler, a minor was also arrested, but was released for medical care and would have been questioned later, according to the Israeli police.
The details of the episode are not entirely clear. But the Palestinian witnesses and a group of American activists on the scene said that before being arrested, Mr. Ballal was turned on as a group of attackers, many of whom were masked, attacked his village of origin of Susya.
The episode attracted attention to the increase in the violence of the colonists in the West Bank. During last year, the Jewish extremists threw rocks against the Palestinians, given on fire and deface the houses. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has recorded over 1,000 episodes of colonous violence in 2024.
President Trump took a softer position on the violence of the settlers, canceling the sanctions imposed by the Biden Administration against individuals accused of having carried out violent acts against the Palestinians. On Tuesday, a confirmation hearing for Mike Huckabee, the choice of Mr. Trump for Ambassador in Israel and a frank supporter of the settlement building, will begin.
The two parts provided several accounts on how the episode started. In a declaration, the Israeli military said that “several terrorists” had launched stones against Israeli vehicles, turning on a violent clash in which Israelis and Palestinians launched each other.
Nasser Nawaja, a field worker for the Israeli group for human rights B’Sselem who lives in Susya, and other Palestinians said that the clash began after the residents of the city tried to drive away the Israeli shepherds who lighten the cattle on land claimed by the village. The masked Israelis group soon joined the others on the outskirts of the village, where two Palestinian houses attacked, they said.
Two American activists with a group that provide protection in the vulnerable areas to the violence of the settlers, Josh Kimelman and Joseph Kaplan Weinger, said they had responded to the Palestinian rescue calls. The attackers also surrounded their car, destroying it with stones, they said. It was only a few minutes walk from Mr. Ballal’s house at that moment, said Kimelman.
Mrs. Tsemel, the lawyer of prisoners, said she talked to her customers on the phone. He said that Mr. Ballal told her that an Israeli attacker gave him a punch, knocking down and continued to beat him as he lay on the ground.
Ballal said he received some medical care in an Israeli military structure before being kept handcuffed and blindfolded on the floor of a detention center, according to Mrs. Tsemel.
Basel Adra, another director of the documentary, said he was also on the spot. He shared movies who said he shot a man with blindfolded eyes he identified as Mr. Ballal who is marched by Israeli forces to waiting vehicles. Adra said that the Israeli soldiers and police officers on the scene did very little to stop the masked Israeli attackers, even if they tried to disperse the Palestinians. The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for commenting on the statements.
Mr. Ballal was among the four directors-others were Mr. Adra, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham-in a Palestinian-Israeli collective who received the Oscar for the best documentary of this month. The film documents the demolition of the homes of the residents of the West Bank inside or close to the villages of Masafer Yatta by the Israeli forces that claim the area for a live military training ground.
After enduring repeated attacks, the Palestinian residents in southern’s the bond, including the village of Mr. Hamdan, brought their case to the Israeli Supreme Court at the end of 2023, claiming that the Israeli security authorities did not protect them from attacks and that, consequently, some inhabitants of the village had escaped their homes.
In a sentence, the Court expressed concern about the inability of Israel to protect them and said that the government – including Israeli military – must protect the Palestinians from future attacks “even in the complicated circumstances of this period”.