‘No Other Land’ director released after attack in West Bank

The Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” Hamdan Ballal, has been released after being detained by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, a fellow filmmaker announced on Tuesday.

“After being handcuffed all night and beaten in a military base, Hamdan Ballal is now free and is about to go home to his family,” Yuval Abraham, an Israeli, and one of Ballal’s co-directors on the film, wrote on X.

The Times of Israel newspaper reported that Ballal and two other detainees were released on bail and taken to a Palestinian hospital for treatment.

The seriously injured filmmaker spent the night on the floor of a military base, it said.

Abraham said Ballal had been held in handcuffs, blindfolded and beaten by two soldiers, citing Ballal’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel.

The information could not initially be independently verified. Tsemel and the Israeli police did not respond to a request for comment. The Israeli military referred questions to the police.

According to eyewitnesses, Ballal was attacked by radical Israeli settlers in the West Bank on Monday. They said Israeli soldiers then took him out of an ambulance and detained him.

The Israeli military said in a statement that “several terrorists hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles near Susya [in the West Bank]. Following this a violent confrontation broke out, involving mutual rock-hurling between Palestinians and Israelis at the scene.”

It said three Palestinian suspects, as well as an Israeli civilian, had been detained, but denied that a Palestinian had been removed from an ambulance.