Israeli settlers attack Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker, army arrests him; EU Left calls for sanctions

UPDATE

Hamdan Ballal was released after spending, as he himself testified, a night lying on the ground, blindfolded and handcuffed in a military base, together with two other people, under the watchful eye of some soldiers, who also beat him.

Brussels – Hollywood applauds him, and Israel arrests him. It is the sad paradox of Hamdan Ballal, one of the four directors of No Other Land, a film documenting the systematic destruction of Palestinian villages in the West Bank by Israeli settlers that won an Oscar for best documentary. The Palestinian filmmaker was attacked yesterday (March 24) by a group of armed settlers at his home south of Hebron and then arrested by the Israel Defense Forces. From the European Parliament, the Left Group raises its voice and calls on Brussels to impose sanctions against settlers who engage in violence in the Palestinian territories.

What happened to Ballal is a replica of the film awarded with the coveted statuette. His property in the village of Susyia, one of 19 that make up the Masafer Yatta district, was surrounded by a group of about 15 masked and armed settlers, with the filmmaker savagely beaten. In a post on X, Israeli co-director Yuval Abraham reconstructed the ambush: “A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co-director of our film No Other Land. They beat him, and he has head and stomach wounds, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he had called and took him away. He has not been heard from since.”

Instead, the Israeli army said it intervened to quell a violent clash between Palestinians and Israelis triggered by “terrorists” who threw stones at settlers. The IDF “arrested three Palestinians suspected of throwing stones at them, as well as an Israeli civilian involved. The detainees were taken by Israeli police for further interrogation,” according to a statement.

It is not the first time that settlers have attacked Israeli-Palestinian documentary filmmakers and crew members: last February, it happened to Basel Adra, the other Palestinian author of No Other Land. Reprisals were carried out with complete impunity, indeed with the increasingly explicit support of the Tel Aviv army. In the week of March 11-17 alone, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented 34 attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian people and property. Twenty-seven were injured, two Palestinian families were displaced, and at least two houses, eight vehicles, and 180 Palestinian-owned trees and saplings were vandalized. Of the injured Palestinians, 23 were shot by Israeli settlers and four by Israeli forces.

Similar numbers roll in every week. By now, over half a million settlers live in Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, in open violation of international law. Last year, Israel’s main allies in the West – the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union – timidly began imposing restrictive measures against extremist settlers responsible for violence against Palestinian communities. Brussels has nine individuals and five Israeli entities in the EU human rights sanctions regime.

According to the delegation chair for relations with Palestine in the European Parliament, Irish Lynn Boylan,  the sanctions are “too limited.” The Left Group MEP insisted that they be “quickly expanded” otherwise, “the horrific settler violence and de facto annexation of the West Bank will continue.” In a statement, the EU Left highlighted the responsibilities of Brussels, which “has failed to increase the pressure on Israel in recent months.”

 Indeed, just yesterday, while Ballal was being arrested, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs was visiting Israel and the West Bank. “Despite the ongoing violence in Gaza and the West Bank, an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu and an ongoing genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, the EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas met with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem in recent days and welcomed the close ties between the European Union and Israel,” MEPs from The Left said.