Israeli police are released by Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal after an incident on the west coast

Israeli authorities on Tuesday announced the Palestinian Director of the Oscar documentary film, which was detained overnight after He and witnesses said was the attack of Israeli settlers on the west coast.

Police said the filmmaker, Hamdan Ballal, one of the director of the documentary “No other country”, was questioned with two Palestinians on suspicion of throwing stones, property damage and “endangering regional security.” All three deny the charges, their lawyer said.

The details of the episodes are still not quite clear, and both sides have provided conflicting depictions of events that are about detention of Mr. Ballala. But witnesses said custody took place as a group of Israeli immigrants-some of whom were masked by the attack on the periphery of the home village of Mr. Ballala in Susyi in the Israeli West Bank.

After release on Tuesday, Mr. Ballal, 37, said he kept his home during the attack, worried that the settlers would try to get in. Suddenly a man hit Mr. Ballala in the head, while two Israeli military soldiers leveled a weapon on him, he said.

“I fell to the ground and then the man beat me all over my body,” Mr. Ballal said in a telephone conversation.

Israeli soldiers later arrested Mr. Ballala and held him overnight. Mr. Ballal said he was connected to the eyes as the soldiers put different objects on their heads and ridiculed him, saying, “This is the director who won an Oscar.”

The Israeli army did not respond to the request for commentary on Mr. Ballala’s account.

One Israeli settler, a minor, is also detained. Israeli police said he had been released to receive medical treatment and would be questioned later.

The episode turned attention to the growing attacks of hard Israeli immigrants against Palestinians on the west coast. Over the past year, Jewish extremists threw rocks on Palestine, burn cars and defal homes. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs More than 1,000 incidents recorded Violence of settlers in 2024.

Human rights groups have long said that Israeli officials rarely break the perpetrators. Despite handful Of the high persecution, the vast majority of police investigations on the attacks of Israelites to Palestinians are closed without charges, According to Yesh Din -uIsraeli Rights Group.

President Trump took a a A softer attitude about the violence of the settlersThe cancellation of the sanctions imposed on the Bidel administration against individuals charged with violent acts against Palestinians. On Tuesday, a certificate of Mike Huckabee’s confirmation, Mr. Trump’s election for Ambassador in Israel and An Outstanding supporter of a settlement buildingHe was ongoing.

Two sides provided different accounts about the events of Mr. Ballala’s arrest. In a statement, the Israeli army said that “several terrorists” threw stones at the Israeli vehicles, burning a violent conflict in which the Israelis and Palestinians threw rocks on each other.

Nasser Nawaja, the terrain worker of the Israeli Human Rights Group B’TSELEM, who lives in Susyi, and other Palestinians said that the confrontation began after the residents of the city sought to drive Israeli shepherds cattle on land claimed by the villa.

A group of Israeli attackers, some masked, soon joined the others on the outskirts of the village, where they attacked two Palestinian homes, they said.

Video of witnesses that New York Times received and inspected part of the attack. In a cell phone and Dashcam shots, a masked man approaches three activists who responded to Palestinian calls for help, pushes them and tries to break through one of them. Three activists retreat into their car, while several other masked men run towards it and break the windshield with a rock.

Basel Adra, another documentary director, who was also at the scene, said that Israeli soldiers and police officers at the scene stopped a little masked Israeli attackers at the scene, even when they tried to disperse Palestine. The Israeli army did not immediately respond to the request for comment on the claim.

Mr. Ballal was among four directors-Mr. Adra, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham Palestinian-Israeli Film Collective, who received the Best Documentary Film Award this month. The movie documented Demolition of homes of the west coast residents In the villages of Masafer Yatta or near the Israeli forces that claim that the area for military live fire training.

After repeated attacks, Palestinian residents on the southern west coast, including from Mr. Hamdan’s village, took their case to the Israeli Supreme Court in late 2023, claiming that the Israeli security forces did not protect them from the attack and that, as a result, some locals paid their homes.

In the verdict last year, the court expressed concern about the failure of Israel to protect them and said that the government – including the Israeli army – must protect Palestine from future attacks “even in the complicated circumstances of this period.”

Malachy Browne contribute to reporting.