It was already dark by the time Hamdan Ballal arrived back home on Tuesday evening, after 24 hours in Israeli military and police custody. The night before, around 15 Israeli settlers — armed with knives, batons, and one with a rifle — had stormed his village of Susiya in the occupied West Bank, hurling stones and assaulting residents along with activists who were staying there.

Ballal, the Oscar-winning co-director of “No Other Land” (which he wrote about last year for +972), was attacked on his doorstep by settlers and Israeli soldiers while trying to protect his family. After an ambulance arrived to provide medical treatment, he was then arrested by soldiers and detained overnight on the grounds that he had thrown stones at the settlers (eyewitnesses told +972 that, contrary to the claims of Israel’s army and police, the settlers’ raid was entirely unprovoked). 

After his release, Ballal was taken to hospital in the city of Hebron before returning to Susiya; there, he reunited with family, friends, activists, and the three fellow co-directors of “No Other Land,” who had swiftly mobilized a global campaign for his release. He was barely able to walk unassisted, and his shirt was stained with blood. Sitting in the playground that overlooks the adjacent Israeli settlement of Ancient Susya, which has long threatened the existence of the Palestinian community, he told the assembled media what he had endured over the past 24 hours. 

“At 6 p.m. last night, as we were starting the Iftar meal of Ramadan, settlers attacked my neighbor’s home,” he recounted. “I ran there to film what was happening, but the attack became more aggressive. I was afraid for my family who were alone in the house — my wife, my three kids, and my brother’s wife — so I ran home. I shut the door and stood outside to protect them, [ensuring] that no settlers would enter.”

About 10 minutes later, Ballal was attacked by a well-known settler, Shem Tov Lusky, who has previously been documented assaulting Palestinians and activists in the South Hebron Hills (including Ballal himself). Lusky was accompanied by two soldiers. “They approached me as I was standing [outside the door],” Ballal said. “I kept filming with my phone. The soldiers started pointing their guns at me and cursing me.

“Shem Tov Lusky [approached me] from behind and punched me on the back of my head,” he continued. “I fell to the ground; my phone fell from my hand. The soldiers kept saying words in Hebrew that I didn’t understand, and [one of them] pointed his gun at me and threatened to shoot. Shem Tov Lusky continued to beat me up. He hit and kicked me in the head over 10 times, and beat me all over my body.”

According to Ballal, one of the soldiers also participated in the attack. “I felt like they were hitting me in order to kill me,” he said. “The soldier kept threatening to shoot me, and he shot twice in the air: the first time two bullets, and the second time three. They kept beating me up. A soldier found my phone and immediately took it.” 

The attack lasted between 15 to 20 minutes, according to Ballal, who appeared exhausted after the arrest and detention. He spoke quietly and slowly; he wanted to highlight every detail of his abuse by the settlers and the military.  

When the assault ended, he asked the soldiers if he could see a doctor. They replied that there were medics at another location in the village, without helping him to get there. “I couldn’t move, and I barely [managed to] walk up to our neighbor’s home,” Ballal said. 

“When I arrived, I fell down,” he continued. “I couldn’t control my body. A police officer came and asked me what happened. I started to explain to him. Then, three soldiers approached me, and one of the soldiers held his hand to my face, kind of showing that he was checking up on me. Then the soldiers left. For 10 to 15 minutes I remained laying on the ground. Then, the soldiers brought me back to the police officer I was speaking with, who took my ID and wrote down my information.”

But instead of receiving proper treatment, Ballal was arrested, along with two other residents of the village, Nasser Shreteh and Khaled Mohammad Shanran. “Four soldiers blindfolded me and took me to the military jeep. They drove for between 40 to 45 minutes, [before we] arrived at the settlement of Kiryat Arba. I needed a doctor. My face was covered in blood. My mouth was bleeding and I could barely speak. I kept insisting on seeing a doctor; they rejected my requests, and I felt the pain get worse and worse.” 

A police officer took him to the bathroom, where he washed his face and tried to rinse the blood out of his mouth. After 10 minutes, however, “the soldiers came again, handcuffed and blindfolded me, put me in a military jeep and brought me to a military base,” Ballal explained. 

After leaving him to sit with his hands bound and his eyes covered for a while, the soldiers led him inside the base and told him that he was meeting with a military doctor.  “They asked me if I had ever had a surgery or if I had a disease, completely ignoring the [settler] attack and what I was feeling at that moment,” he recounted. “One of the medics said ‘He’s injured here, but you don’t need anything for this, you’re okay’ — and that’s it.” 

For the rest of the night, Ballal was forced to sit in a cold room, blindfolded and handcuffed. “I couldn’t see [where I was], but it was very, very cold, under an AC. They prevented me from moving for the whole night,” he said. “Whenever I moved my legs to try to rest, a soldier approached me with a stick or something in his hand and hit me on the leg.” 

When the soldiers realized — perhaps from reading the mounting media reports — that Ballal is an Oscar-winning director, things only got worse. “I heard the voices of the soldiers changing,” he recalled. “They always spoke in Hebrew but a few times they mentioned ‘Hamdan that got the Oscar.’ They kept making fun of me, hitting me and laughing and putting objects on my head.” 

After many hours like this, the soldiers brought Ballal — still handcuffed and blindfolded — along with the other two Palestinians arrested with him in Susiya to a police station for interrogation. It was then that Ballal learned that the settler who attacked him had filed a complaint to the police falsely claiming that Hamdan attacked him. 

Following an eight hour wait at the police station, Ballal was finally released on bail of NIS 500 ( around $135) and issued a 30-day ban on contact with Shem Tov Lusky. “I told the police officers, ‘He attacked me! I didn’t attack him. I didn’t want to talk to him.” 

Ballal was treated in hospital for the bruising he sustained in the attack and for dehydration after not being fed or given water for 24 hours. Although this was by no means the first attack of its kind in Susiya, it did feel to Ballal like it was on a different level than what he’s experienced previously. 

“This is the first time I’ve been subjected to such a severe attack,” he said, adding that he felt the aim was to kill him. “I really now think there is a serious threat to our lives after the success of the movie and the Oscar.” 

Basel Adra, Ballal’s co-director from the nearby village of A-Tuwani who translated his testimony from Arabic to English for the journalists present, emphasized the ubiquity of such attacks in the Masafer Yatta region, noting that they are almost always accompanied by “varying levels of support from the occupation army.” He added: “The soldiers are there to facilitate the attacks. This has been the case for years.” 

In response to +972’s inquiry, Shem Tov Lusky stated that he “didn’t hit anyone. I arrived with the soldiers. They told me: come and identify the attackers. I arrived at the entrance to [Ballal’s] house, he hit me in front of the soldiers. I defended myself, the soldiers pinned him to the ground, and he started putting on a show. No one attacked him, neither I nor the soldiers.”

The Israeli army did not respond to +972’s inquiry regarding Ballal’s treatment in custody.