"Hamdam Ballal is free and will return home to his family."
This was announced by Yuval Abraham , colleague of the Palestinian director and Oscar winner for the documentary “No Other Land”, arrested yesterday by Israeli security forces after the clashes between Palestinians and settlers in the West Bank.
The 36-year-old spent the night in detention. “He was handcuffed all night and beaten in a military base,” Abraham wrote on X. The arrest came yesterday after dozens of settlers arrived near the village of Susya, in the southern West Bank, throwing stones at cars, homes and residents.
Ballal was also beaten, then arrested by IDF men.
" A group of settlers attacked the house of Hamdan, who directed the film with me. They beat him on the head and all over his body . While he was wounded and bleeding, the soldiers entered the ambulance he had called and arrested him. Since then there has been no news and it is not clear whether he is receiving medical care and what is happening to him", the reconstruction of Abraham, who posted a video showing a masked settler attacking the village of Ballal. "They continued to attack the American activists as well, smashing their car with stones", added the Israeli director.
On March 3, "No Other Land," which chronicles the IDF's demolitions of the Palestinian village of Masafer Yatta in the West Bank, won the Oscar for best documentary . The film features two Palestinian directors, Ballal and Basel Adra, both residents of Masafar Yatta, and two Israeli directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. On stage in Los Angeles, two of the film's four directors, an Israeli and a Palestinian, called for rights for Palestinians and a negotiated solution to the conflict. Abraham spoke about the destruction of Gaza and also about the Israeli hostages, brutally kidnapped on October 7.
(Online Union)