israeli settler

JERUSALEM — Palestinian Oscar-winning director Basel Adra said Israeli soldiers conducted a raid at his home in the occupied West Bank over the weekend, searching for him and going through his wife’s phone.

Israeli settlers attacked his village Saturday, injuring two of his brothers and one cousin, Adra told the Associated Press. He accompanied them to the hospital. While there, he said that he heard from family in the village that nine Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.

The soldiers asked his wife, Suha, of his whereabouts and went through her phone while his 9-month-old daughter was home. They also briefly detained one of his uncles, he said.

Adra spent the night outside the village, unable to get home and check on his family because soldiers were blocking the village entrance and he was scared of being detained, he said.

Israel’s military said soldiers were in the village after Palestinians had thrown rocks, injuring two Israeli civilians. It said its forces were still in the village, searching the area and questioning people.

Adra said settlers attacked the Palestinians on their land, and denied throwing rocks or seeing anyone from the village do so.

Videos recorded by Adra’s cousin and viewed by the AP showed settlers attacking a man Adra identified as his brother, Adam, who was hospitalized with bruising to his left hand, elbow and chest, according to hospital records shared with the AP.

In another video, a settler chases a solidarity activist through an olive grove, tackling her to the ground.

Adra has spent his career as a journalist and filmmaker chronicling settler violence in Masafer Yatta, the southern reaches of the West Bank where he was born. After settlers attacked his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, in March, he told the AP that he felt they were being targeted more intensely since winning the Oscar.

He described Saturday’s events as “horrific.”

“Even if you are just filming the settlers, the army comes and chases you, searches your house,” he said. “The whole system is built to attack us, to terrify us, to make us very scared.”

Another co-director, Yuval Abraham, said he was “terrified for Basel.”

“What happened today in his village, we’ve seen this dynamic again and again, where the Israeli settlers brutally attack a Palestinian village and later on the army comes, and attacks the Palestinians,” Abraham said.

“No Other Land,” which won an Oscar this year for best documentary, depicts the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. Ballal and Adra made the joint Palestinian-Israeli production with Israeli directors Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The film has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, such as when Miami Beach proposed ending the lease of a movie theater that screened the documentary.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East War, along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for a future state and view Jewish settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution.

Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to more than 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centers.

The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouins, to be expelled. Around 1,000 residents have largely remained, but soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards, and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.

During the war in Gaza, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank during wide-scale military operations. There has also been a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians, as well as a surge in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

Frankel writes for the Associated Press.

Awdah Hathaleen a Palestinian community leader who was a consultant on the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” died Monday after an Israeli settler allegedly shot him to death in the occupied West Bank.

“No Other Land” filmmaker and subject Yuval Abraham announced his colleague’s death Monday, writing on X (formerly Twitter), “[Hathaleen] just died. Murdered.” Two hours prior, Abraham shared video of the confrontation that led to Hathaleen’s death. In the video, the settler in a dark shirt can be seen shoving people in a group, pulling out and pointing his pistol in their direction. The video shows him firing at people off-screen.

In the caption of his video, Abraham writes that the settler “just shot” Hathaleen in the lungs and identified the shooter as Yinon Levi. Levi was among the 13 hard-line Israeli settlers targeted last year by international sanctions for their alleged attacks and harassment of Palestinians in the West Bank. President Trump lifted U.S. sanctions against the Israelis in January.

“This is him in the video firing like crazy,” Abraham tweeted.

The incident occurred in in the village of Umm al-Khair, in the Masafer Yatta region that was the focus of “No Other Land.” Hathaleen was rushed to a hospital in Israel, where he was pronounced dead, his family confirmed to the New York Times. He was 31.

According to multiple reports, Israeli police said they responded to the scene, detaining and arresting an Israeli citizen. Police did not identify the detainee they took in for questioning, and claimed “terrorists hurled rocks toward” the nearby Israeli settlement of Carmel, according to CNN. Additionally, the Israeli military detained five Palestinians and two foreign tourists for their alleged involvement in Monday’s incident, the BBC reported.

The IDF did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for confirmation on Tuesday.

“No Other Land” filmmaker and Palestinian journalist Basel Adra on Tuesday tweeted video showing the attack from another angle. In this video, Levi is seen with the pistol in his right hand, smacking a person in front of him. The clip also sees Levi raising his right arm and firing off-screen. Adra says Levi “fires the bullet that took” Hathaleen’s life, adding in his caption that “the apartheid court decided to release him to house arrest.”

On Monday, Adra tweeted he was in disbelief about his friend’s death: “My dear friend Adwah was slaughtered this evening. He was standing in front of the community center in his village where a settler fired a bullet that pierced his chest and took his life. This is how Israel erases us — one life at a time.”

On Instagram, the Center for Jewish Nonviolence described Hathaleen as a well-known community figure: “an activist, artist, and teacher in the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta.” The activist group reminded Instagram followers that last month Hathaleen and another Palestinian man were denied entry, detained overnight and deported back to the West Bank when they arrived at the San Francisco International Airport.

“So many in our community knew Awdah, and gained so much by learning from him, and being his friend,” the organization said, concluding its statement with a call to action. “May Awdah’s memory be a revolution. May we see justice for Awdah, and justice for all Palestinians, within our lifetime.”

Earlier this year, Israeli settlers brutalized another member of the Oscar-winning “No Other Land” team. In March, Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was beat in his head and stomach by settlers in the village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta area. Palestinian residents said the settlers, some wearing masks, some carrying guns and some wearing military uniforms, attacked as residents were breaking their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to the Associated Press. Israeli military and police forces detained the filmmaker on suspicion of hurling rocks at IDF and police.

He was released a day later, with bruises on his face and blood on his clothes. As he recalled hearing “the voice of soldiers laughing at me,” his wife said she felt the international attention surrounding “No Other Land’s” Oscar win prompted settlers to “attack us more.” The harrowing documentary , which became the subject of controversy in Miami Beach earlier this year, documents Israel’s demolition of Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta and the displacement of their communities in favor of Israeli military training grounds.

Since Israel launched its war against Hamas nearly two years ago, more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Tuesday. At least 77 were killed over the past 24 hours, most while seeking food.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.