Palestinian director winning in Oscar, Hamdan Ballal, released after arrest in the West Bank

The winning director of an Oscar of a documentary about the Israel-Palestinian conflict was released by detention, one day after being injured and arrested during an attack by Israeli colonists from his village in the occupied Westord.

Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the prize that does not win any other land, said he was assaulted by the colonists after filming him by attacking a neighbor’s house and then returned to make sure that his own house was not attacked.

“I was just waiting outside, if any colonists or an army attacks my house,” he told Reuters after being released from police custody.

He said he was pushed to the ground, while the soldiers cried to him to stand up and showed his weapons.

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“He is crazy, you can imagine your family, your children in the house and you have to protect them,” he said.

“I can’t do anything when someone threatens your life with their weapon. I simply film them and this is,” he said for a water in another interview, describing how a colonist went to the front door flanked by armed Israeli in uniform.

The colon struck it on the ball in the head, beating it to the ground and began to hit his head as “it was a football.” One of the soldiers used the bottom of his gun to hit Ballal’s foot, he says.

Shortly before the incident, in which he became arrested by the Israeli security forces, a group of colonists attacked a meeting for Iftar, the end of Ramadan daily, in the village of Susiya, near Hebron.

“Dozens of colonists attacked the meeting in Iftar,” Jihad Nawaja, the head of the Susiya Local Council, told Reuters.

“The young people came out to prevent them and there were about eight wounds on our side.”

The Israeli police arrested three men, including Ballal, who was injured during the stand-off.

“It is not the first time that the colonists attacked our assembly, but lately the attacks have grown,” said Mr. Nawaja, adding that the colonists stole about 10 sheep from the village during the attack.

The Monday incident was the latest in which Israeli colonists were accused of attacked Palestinian or Bedouin villages and camps in the Westordan, sometimes to steal animals. Palestinians and activists who monitor such attacks say that the police and the army are usually without intervening.

Lamia Ballal, the film’s wife, said that the colonists had gathered around the family’s house, and her husband went out to prevent them from entering.

“The colonists attacked him and began to beat him, then arrested him,” she told Reuters.

Anna Lippman, an American Canadian in a group called the Center for Jewish nonviolence, said that her group was attacked by the colonists after reaching the village around 15 minutes after the beginning of violence.

“Visa”

The Israeli military said the police and the soldiers intervened after the Palestinians threw rocks to the vehicles of Israeli citizens and later at the Israeli security forces.

“In response, the forces caught three Palestinians suspected of throwing the rocks on them, as well as an Israeli civilian involved in the violent confrontation,” he said in a statement.

He denied reports that at least one of the Palestinians was arrested in an ambulance.

Asked on Tuesday for an update of Ballal’s condition and condition, the Israeli police sent the statement issued for the first time the previous night.

No other land, a film about the Israeli movement of a Palestinian community, co-directed by the Palestinian and Israeli directors, won the Oscar for the best documentary at this year’s Oscar.

Ballal said that one of the colonists who took part in the attack was well known.

“It’s not the first time,” he said.

“He attacked my house many times and also stepped on cows in the garden of my house.”

Basel Adra, one of the other film co-directories, said that he believes that the colonists had taken the army to the family’s house as revenge for representing the film in Masafer Yatta, next to the place where the incident took place on Monday.

“Because he wears his room and documents what is happening, I think he is targeted and he was avenged this way at night,” he said.

The European countries and the previous administration of US President Joe Biden have imposed sanctions to violent Israeli colonists, but under President Donald Trump, the White House eliminated them.

Reuters