Israeli soldiers raided Saturday at the West Bank home of Basel Adora, one of the directors of the Oscar-winning film. There are no other landsPalestinian filmmakers confirmed themselves.
Adora said the soldier asked his wife Suha where he was and searched her cell phone, adding that her nine-month-old daughter was at home at the time of the attack.
Earlier on Saturday, Israeli settlers attacked his village, causing injury to two of Adora’s brothers and one cousin, the director told the Associated Press. Adora takes his family to the hospital, where he learns that Israeli soldiers have raided his home.
There are no other landsPalestinian-Israel co-production overseen by Basel Adora, Hamdan Baral, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Zel document the struggle by the inhabitants to stop Israeli forces from destroying Masafa Yatta on the occupied West Bank and the progressive expulsion of their communities.
Adra has dedicated her career as a journalist and filmmaker documenting settler violence at Masafer Yatta. He described the Saturday event as “terrifying.”
“Even if you’re just filming settlers, the troops will come and chase after you and look for your home,” he said. “The whole system is built to attack us, terrorize us, and scare us very much.”
“What happened today in his village is that Israeli settlers brutally attacked Palestinian villages, later came to the army and attacked the Palestinians, and saw this dynamic over and over again.”
The West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza have been under Israeli occupation since 1967, following the Middle East War. Since then, Israel has built more than 100 villages and has more than half a million Israeli settlers inhabited it.
Palestinians call for all three to be part of an independent Palestinian state and view the continued expansion of Israeli settlements as a major obstacle to the two states’ solutions. Currently, around three million Palestinians on the occupied West Bank live under what appears to be controlled by open-ended Israeli forces, with only a limited portion of the territory being controlled by the Palestinian Authorities (PA).
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed a contract to promote illegal expansion plans in the occupied West Bank, cutting across lands that Palestinians hope to form the foundations of their future nation.
“There is no Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said on Thursday during a visit to Male Admim settlement in the West Bank.
Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal under international law. Last year, the International Court of Justice declared in a landmark ruling that Israel should end settlement operations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and end occupation of those regions as quickly as possible, as in Gaza.
Masafar yacht
In the 1980s, Israeli forces designated Adora’s hometown, Masafayatta, as a live-action training zone, ordering the expulsion of its residents, mostly Arab Bedouin. Despite this, around 1,000 inhabitants stayed, but Israeli soldiers regularly entered the area, destroying homes, tents, aquariums and olive orchards.
Since the beginning of the Israeli war in Gaza, which began after Hamas-led extremists attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank during a wide range of military operations, and attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers have increased. There was also an increase in Palestinian attacks on the Israelis.