JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli soldiers raided his West Bank house on Saturday in search of him and via his wife’s phone, Palestinian Oscar director Basel Adra said.
Israeli settlers attacked his village, hurting two of his brothers and a cousin, Adra told the Associated Press. He accompanied them to the hospital. There, he said he heard from his family in the village that nine Israeli soldiers rushed into his home.
He said the soldier asked his wife Suha’s whereabouts and then passed her phone with his 9-month-old daughter at home. They also briefly detained one of his uncles, he said.
As of Saturday night, Adra said he could not go home to check on his family because soldiers blocked the entrance to the village and he was afraid of being detained.
Israeli troops said soldiers were in the village after Palestinians threw stones and two Israeli civilians were injured. It said its troops were still in the village, searching for the area and asking people.
Adra’s career has been on the south bank of the south bank of the West Bank where he was born, journalist and filmmaker Chronicle settler violence. After settlers attacked his co-director Hamdan Ballal in March, he told the Associated Press that he felt their goal was to be stronger since winning the Oscar.
He described Saturday’s incident as “terror.”
“Even if you’re just photographing settlers, the army is coming to chase you and search for your house,” he said. “The whole system is to attack us, fear, and we’re very scared.”
Yuval Abraham, another co-director, said he was “feared by Basel.”
“What happened in his village today, we see this dynamic again and again, with Israeli settlers brutally attacking a Palestinian village and later attacking Palestinians in the army.”
“No other land,” this year won an Oscar for Best Documentary, depicting residents of the Masafer Yatta area fighting to prevent the Israeli military from demolishing its village. Ballal and Adra have co-produced the Palestine-Israel joint production with Israeli directors Abraham and Rachel Szore.
The film has won a series of international awards, starting with the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival. It also caused anger from Israel and abroad, just as Miami Beach proposed to end the documentary screening of the cinema rental.
Israel, together with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East War. Palestinians hope for the future state of all three countries and view settlement growth as a major obstacle to the two-state solution.
Israel has established more than 100 settlements with more than 500,000 settlers with Israeli citizenship. Three million Palestinians in the West Bank live under the seemingly open Israeli military rule, with Western-backed Palestinian authorities managing the population center.
The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the western bank of the southern region as a live fire training area in the 1980s and ordered residents, mainly Arab Bedouin, to be fired. About 1,000 residents still exist, but soldiers often move in and demolish houses, tents, water tanks and olive gardens – Palestinians fear a complete deportation at any time.
During the Gaza War, Israel killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank during a large-scale military operation, and the attacks on Palestinians by settlers increased. Palestinian attacks on Israelis also surged.
