What happened
Israeli authorities arrested Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian co-director of this year’s Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” in his West Bank village of Susya on Monday evening and released him Tuesday afternoon, beaten and bruised from what he and witnesses described as an attack by Israeli settlers aided by Israeli soldiers. Ballal was “handcuffed all night and beaten in a military base,” said Yuval Abraham, the film’s Israeli co-director.
Who said what
Israeli and Palestinian witnesses “provided conflicting accounts” of events, The New York Times said, with the settlers and villagers both claiming they were defending themselves and Israeli police saying Ballal and two other Palestinians were detained on “suspicion of hurling stones, property damage and ‘endangering regional security,'” charges all three deny.
Ballal told The Associated Press that a known settler attacked him as he was guarding his home, kicking his head “like a football” while two Israeli soldiers watched or joined in. Ballal said he was blindfolded for 20 hours in a frigid cell and overheard Hebrew-speaking soldiers saying “Oscar” and his name, so “I realized they were attacking me specifically.”
What next?
The “episode drew attention to rising attacks by hard-line Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank,” the Times said. According to Basel Adra, another co-director of “No Other Land,” there has been a “massive upswing in attacks by settlers and Israeli forces since the Oscar win,” the AP said.