An Oscar-winning Palestinian director and two others have been released by Israel, a day after he was badly beaten by Jewish settlers and detained by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
Reports said Hamdan Ballal and the two other Palestinians have left the police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba where they were being held overnight.
Ballal, one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning documentary film “No Other Land”, had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes.
The Israeli military said Palestinians threw rocks at Israeli citizens near Susiya, followed by clashes between the two groups.
The army added that together with the police, they arrived to disperse the confrontation, when a group began hurling rocks at the security forces, which then apprehended three Palestinians, including the filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, and an Israeli civilian.
Ballal was one of three Palestinians detained in the village of Susiya, according to attorney Leah Tsemmel.
Police told her they're being held at a military base for medical treatment and she said she hasn't been able to speak with them.
In the same village a group of 10-20 masked settlers with stones and sticks also assaulted activists with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence - who were supporting the Palestinians - smashing their car windows and slashing tires to make them flee the area, one of the activists at the scene, Josh Kimelman, told the AP.
The Center for Jewish Nonviolence provided video that showed a masked man shoving and swinging his fists at two activists in a dusty field at night. The activists rush back to their car as rocks can be heard thudding against the vehicle.
Basel Adra, another co-director, witnessed the detention and said around two dozen settlers - some masked, some carrying guns, some in Israeli uniform - attacked the village. Soldiers who arrived pointed their guns at the Palestinians, while settlers continued throwing stones.
“No Other Land,” which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages.
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 Bedouin, to be expelled.
Around 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, 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, and there has also been a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians. There has been a surge in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
(Associated Press)
