Palestinian Oscar winner says that attack will not keep him away from home

In a small village in the hills of Hebron, in the busy West Bank, Hamdan Ballal was outside his house in a sportshorah with a purple eye.

He held the hand of his 18 -month -old daughter, who was in a puddle of her dry blood.

Things seemed quite different to the award -winning director just a few weeks ago. He flew to Los Angeles to receive an Oscar for the movie “No Other Land,” a documentary he coded about the violence and forced displacement of Palestinian residents to illegal Israeli settlements in those same hills.

Ballal was attacked by a multitude of Israeli settlers in front of his house in the village of Susya on Monday night (24).

“I thought they would kill me,” he said.

Ballal said to CNN That a group of settlers arrived at their village and began to attack their neighbors, two farmers in their 60s, at night fall. When he tried to document the violence, three masked settlers, including one who had previously assaulted him and is known by the authorities, came after him, he reports, beating him outside his front door while his wife Lamya and his three young children shouted with fear for his life-and theirs.

Meanwhile, Ballal said Israeli soldiers soon arrived outside their home, where they shot shots into the air.

He said a soldier stuck his rifle to his leg and said to him, “After (shooting) to the air, I will put the shot on his body.”

After the attack, Ballal and two other Palestinians were taken by Israeli soldiers and detained in a military facility in the Kiryat Arba settlement, where he said he was handcuffed, blindfolded and beaten.

The Israeli army called Ballal’s allegations that he was beaten in the custody of “unfounded.”

Attacks to Palestinian farmers and activists in the occupied West Bank are not uncommon.

However, aggression in attack – and Ball’s subsequent arrest – made him feel that the settlers – and the Israeli army – were taking revenge on their film and their international reach.

“At that moment, I thought that because of my Oscar, they wanted to kill me,” he said.

In detention, Ball, who does not speak Hebrew, said he heard the soldiers laughing when they said their name and the word “Oscar.”

The Israeli military said that the Palestinians detained received medical treatment and “were handcuffed according to the operational protocol.”

They accused Ballal of throwing stones at soldiers and said he had been detained on suspicion of pouring objects, property damage and regional security risk.

“They change everything,” Ballal said about the military’s interpretation of events.

“Why did the settlers come here at my house? To tell me Hi? Or to give me flowers? No, they came here to attack, kill, to force you to leave your home,” he said, adding that many Palestinian residents end up leaving their homes after years of sustained violence.

“When they have the law in their hands, they can do whatever they want,” Ballal said about the settlers, stressing what several human rights organizations said about Israel’s role in supporting the violence of settlers – and impunity.

Amnesty International has called the Violence of the settlers “part of a state -supported decades campaign to expropriate, displace, and oppress Palestinians in the busy West Bank, including East Jerusalem, under the apartheid system of Israel,” and “Israeli forces have a history of allowing the violence of settlers.”

Israel denounces any characterization of its treatment to Palestinians as apartheid as an anti -Semitic. THE CNN He contacted the Prime Minister’s office to comment on his settlers policies.

Behind his house, Ballal looked at his fields, where a perimeter of advanced settlers were visible. He said his family has not cultivated much since the Israeli War in Gaza began after Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023 to Israel.

“I don’t Aramos after October 7 because of the danger of the settlers,” he said.

Advanced settlers are often established by Israeli settlers at the top of hills with some caravans and sometimes cattle to mark their claim.

The number of these advanced posts has increased by almost 50% since October 7, according to a joint report shared with the CNN By Peace Now and Kerem Navot, two Israeli defense groups who oppose settlements and monitor their development.

These land appropriations go hand in hand with a climb in the violence of Israeli and settlers security forces against the Palestinians, paving the way for the expansion of settlements, which is documented in the Ballal movie.

This violence has worsened further since the reelection of US President Donald Trump, a firm supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government’s settlement expansion policy in West Bank, activists say.

In early January, Trump revoked the Biden era sanctions on ultra -right groups and individuals accused of involvement in Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank.

And during his first term, Trump abandoned the longstanding position that the expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories is illegal, contrary to most international laws.

From January 2024 to 2025, at least 1,420 incidents of settlement violence in the occupied West Bank were recorded, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

These incidents include settlers allegedly killing five Palestinians, including one child, and injuring another 360, including 35 children, according to OCHA.

More than 26,100 Palestinian -owned trees – which are vital to the local economy – were also vandalized at that time, OCHA said.

On Sunday (23), Netanyahu’s office approved a plan to separate and legalize 13 advanced settlements in the occupied West Bank, a movement that its ultra -right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, greeted “royal sovereignty” in the West Bank.

For Ballal, the attack – and Netanyahu’s actions – are even more reason to continue fighting for his community.

“I put myself in this circle (of activism and film production) because of my community, my villages – I need justice to them. So we made this movie, to draw attention to what is happening in this area and what is happening there.”

Later, in the afternoon, the settlers brought their cows and sheep to graze on the farm near the land of Ballal.

The settlers were accompanied by Israeli soldiers.

Ballal said no amount of intimidation – of settlers or government – will remove him from his home.

Standing under the sun, he added, “No other house. No other land.”

This content was originally published in Oscar -winning Palestinian director says that attack will not remove him from home on the CNN Brazil website.

Source: CNN Brasil