In a small village in the Hebron hills of the occupied West Bank, Hamdan Ballal stood outside his house in a track suit with a black eye. <\/p>\n
He held the hand of his 18-month-old daughter, who stood in a pool of his dried blood. <\/p>\n
Things looked quite different for the award-winning director just weeks ago. He had flown to Los Angeles to accept an Oscar for the film, \u201cNo Other Land,\u201d a documentary he co-directed about the violence and forced displacement of Palestinian villagers for illegal Israeli settlements in those same hills. <\/p>\n
Ballal was attacked by a mob of Israeli settlers in front of his home, in the village of Susya on Monday evening. <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought they would kill me,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ballal said, Israeli soldiers soon arrived outside his home, where they shot live rounds into the air. <\/p>\n
He said one soldier pushed his rifle into his leg and told him, \u201c\u2019After (shooting) in the air, I will put the shot in your body.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
After the attack, Ballal and two other Palestinians were taken away by Israeli soldiers and detained in a military facility in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, where he said he was handcuffed, blindfolded and beaten. <\/p>\n
The Israeli military called Ballal\u2019s allegations that he was beaten in custody <\/strong>\u201cbaseless.\u201d <\/p>\n Attacks on Palestinian farmers and activists in the occupied West Bank are not new. <\/p>\n However, the ferocity of the attack \u2013 and Ballal\u2019s subsequent detention \u2013 made him feel that the settlers \u2013 and the Israeli military \u2013 were taking revenge for their film and its international reach. <\/p>\n \u201cAt that moment, I thought because of my Oscar, they wanted to kill me,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n In detention, Ballal, who doesn\u2019t speak Hebrew, said he heard the soldiers laughing when they said his name and the word \u201cOscar.\u201d <\/p>\n The Israeli military said the Palestinian detainees were given medical treatment and \u201chandcuffed in accordance with operational protocol.\u201d <\/p>\n They accused Ballal of throwing stones at soldiers and said that he had been detained on suspicion of rock hurling, property damage, and endangering regional security. <\/p>\n \u201cThey change everything,\u201d Ballal said of the military\u2019s interpretation of the events. <\/p>\n \u201cWhy did the settlers come here to my house? To say hi to me? Or to give me flowers? No, they came here to attack, to kill, to push you to leave your home,\u201d he said, adding that many Palestinian villagers eventually leave their homes after years of sustained violence. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen they have the law in their hand, they can do whatever they want,\u201d Ballal said of the settlers, underscoring what multiple human rights organizations have said about Israel\u2019s role in backing settler violence \u2013 and settler impunity. <\/p>\n Amnesty International has called settler violence \u201cpart of a decades long state-backed campaign to dispossess, displace and oppress Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, under Israel\u2019s system of apartheid,\u201d and that \u201cIsraeli forces have a track record of enabling settler violence.\u201d <\/p>\n Behind his house, Ballal looked to his fields, where a perimeter of settler outposts were visible. He said that his family haven\u2019t farmed much since Israel\u2019s war in Gaza began following Hamas\u2019 October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel. <\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t plow it after October 7 because of the danger from the settlers,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Settler outposts are often established by Israeli settlers on hilltops with a few caravans and sometimes livestock to mark their claim. <\/p>\n Such land grabs go hand-in-hand with an escalation in violence by Israeli security forces and settlers against Palestinians, paving the way for settlement expansion, which is documented in Ballal\u2019s film. <\/p>\n That violence has become even worse since the re-election of US President Donald Trump, a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government\u2019s settlement expansion policy in the West Bank, activists say. <\/p>\n In early January, Trump rescinded Biden-era sanctions on far-right settler groups and individuals accused of involvement in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. And during his first term, Trump abandoned the long-held position that Israeli settlement expansion in occupied Palestinian territories are illegal, contrary to most international law. <\/p>\n From January 2024 to 2025, at least 1,420 incidents of settler violence in the occupied West Bank were recorded, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Those incidents include settlers reportedly killing five Palestinians, including a child, and injuring 360 others, including 35 children, according to OCHA. <\/p>\n More than 26,100 Palestinian-owned trees \u2013 which are vital to the local economy \u2013 were also vandalized in that period, OCHA said. <\/p>\n On Sunday, Netanyahu\u2019s cabinet approved a plan to separate and legalize 13 settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, a move that his far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich hailed as a move toward what he called \u201cactual sovereignty\u201d in the West Bank. <\/p>\n For Ballal, the assault \u2013 and Netanyahu\u2019s moves \u2013 are even more of a reason to continue to fight for his community. <\/p>\n \u201cI brought myself in this circle (of activism and filmmaking) because of my community, my villages \u2013 I need justice for them. Because of that, we made this movie, to bring attention to what\u2019s happening in this area and what is happening there.\u201d <\/p>\n Later in the afternoon, settlers brought their cows and sheep to graze on the farm next to Ballal\u2019s land. <\/p>\n The settlers were accompanied by Israeli soldiers. <\/p>\n Ballal said that no amount of intimidation \u2013 from settlers or from the government \u2013 will push him from his home. <\/p>\n Standing under the sun, he added: \u201cNo other home. No other land.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a small village in the Hebron hills of the occupied West Bank, Hamdan Ballal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}