What happened to\u00a0Ballal is a\u00a0replica of the film awarded with the\u00a0coveted 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<\/strong>, with\u00a0the 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.\u00a0They beat him, and he has head and stomach wounds, bleeding<\/strong>. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he had called and took him away. He has not been heard from since.”<\/p>\n 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<\/strong> at them, as well as an Israeli civilian involved. The detainees were taken by Israeli police for further interrogation,” according to a statement.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0No 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<\/a>\u00a034 attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian people and property<\/strong>. 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.<\/p>\n Similar numbers roll in every week. By now, over half a million settlers<\/strong> 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<\/a> restrictive measures against extremist settlers responsible for violence against Palestinian communities. Brussels\u00a0has nine\u00a0individuals and five\u00a0Israeli entities in the EU<\/strong> human rights sanctions regime.<\/p>\n According to the delegation chair for relations with Palestine in the European Parliament, Irish Lynn Boylan,\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>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<\/strong> will continue.” In a statement, the EU Left highlighted the responsibilities of Brussels, which “has failed to\u00a0increase the pressure on Israel in recent months.”<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/000_36Z69BV-scaled.jpg\")
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