Israel releases Palestinian Oscar winner after West Bank detention

JERUSALEM - The Israeli police on March 25 released Oscar-winning Palestinian film-maker Hamdan Ballal, who had been detained a day earlier for “hurling rocks” following what activists described as an attack by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Mr Basel Adra – who worked with Mr Ballal on the Oscar-winning documentary film No Other Land – posted on social media platform X a photo of Mr Ballal in a hospital after his release, with blood stains on his shirt.

“After I won the Oscar, I did not expect to be exposed to such attacks,” Mr Ballal said in a video by AFPTV. “It was a very strong attack and the goal was to kill.”

According to the Israeli military,

three Palestinians were apprehended

on March 24 for “hurling rocks” during a “violent confrontation” between Israelis and Palestinians in the southern West Bank village of Susya.

“Following this, a violent confrontation broke out, involving mutual rock hurling between Palestinians and Israelis,” the military statement said.

The village is near Masafer Yatta, a grouping of hamlets south of Hebron city and the setting of No Other Land, which won Best Documentary at the 2025 Academy Awards.

The film tells the story of Palestinians forcibly displaced by Israeli troops and settlers in the area, which was declared a restricted military zone in the 1980s.

A police spokesperson confirmed Mr Ballal had been detained, while a later statement from the force said three people had been released on bail.

The statement said they were being investigated “on suspicion of rock hurling, property damage and endangering regional security”.

‘Hitting me all over’

Mr Ballal said he had been attacked by a settler. “He was hitting me all over my body and there was also a soldier with him hitting me,” he said.

Mr Yuval Abraham, who co-directed No Other Land, said Mr Ballal had injuries to the “head and stomach, bleeding”.

Activists from the anti-occupation group Centre for Jewish Nonviolence said that they witnessed the violence in Susya while there in an effort to deter settler violence.

“This type of violence is happening on a regular basis,” said American activist Jenna, who declined to share her full name out of security concerns.

She said that before Israeli forces arrived, a group of 15 to 20 settlers attacked the activists as well as Mr Ballal’s house in the village.

Foreign activists regularly stay in Masafer Yatta’s communities to accompany Palestinians as they tend to their crops or shepherd their sheep, and document instances of settler violence.

Attacks on the rise

Rights groups have said that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, a separate Palestinian territory, there has been a spike in attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

Occupied by Israel since 1967, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law. AFP