Max Saltman, Lauren Izso,
Sat, September 13, 2025
Basel Adra speaks during an event in Madrid, Spain on June 23. - Alejandro Martinez Velez/Europa Press/Getty Images
Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker and activist Basel Adra said soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) searched his house in the occupied West Bank after a group of Israeli settlers attacked him, his family members and a foreign activist on Saturday.
On Saturday afternoon, a group of settlers from the illegal Havat Ma’on outpost near Adra’s village of At-Tuwani began trespassing in his olive grove, Adra told CNN.
When Adra, two of his brothers, his cousin and a foreign activist attempted to confront the settlers, they were attacked, Adra said.
“The police, the army came when the settlers were attacking us,” Adra said. “They did not stop them. One of the settlers chased one of the solidarity activists, and he beat her on the ground. The soldiers were watching, didn’t do anything.”
Adra said that one of his brothers was run over by a settler riding an ATV and had to be hospitalized.
After the attack, the IDF “invaded” At-Tuwani, Adra said, searching his house for twenty minutes and looking through his wife’s phone. The army also blocked the village road to an ambulance, Adra added.
“We’ve filed dozens of complaints against these same settlers for grazing their sheep among our olive trees,” Adra said. “We bring the police, and they do nothing.”
CNN has reached out to the mayor of the regional council that includes Havat Ma’on for comment. The IDF told CNN in a statement that they had deployed to At-Tuwani after they received a report “regarding several terrorists who hurled rocks at Israeli civilians adjacent to At-Tuwani.”
“As a result of the rock hurling, two Israeli civilians were injured and evacuated to receive medical treatment,” the IDF wrote. “Upon receiving the report, the security forces were dispatched to the scene and are currently conducting searches in the area and questioning suspects.”
Adra denied that anyone in his group threw rocks, calling the allegation “bullshit.”
“They were attacking us on private land,” Adra said of the settlers.
A March report by activist groups Peace Now and Kerem Navot and verified by CNN satellite analysis found that settlers established 49 new illegal shepherding outposts between October 7, 2023, and December 2024, an increase of 50%.
The outposts, which are illegal under both Israeli and international law, are often founded by the most extreme Israeli settlers.
Last year, Adra and three other filmmakers won an Oscar for their documentary “No Other Land,” which chronicled the forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank area of Masafer Yatta.
It isn’t the first time that the filmmakers have been attacked since winning their award. In March, Adra’s co-director on the film Hamdan Ballal was detained by Israeli forces overnight after being assaulted by settlers just after an iftar dinner during Ramadan
At the time, an activist who witnessed Ballal’s assault told CNN that such attacks are a regular occurrence.
“They don’t always involve an Oscar-winning filmmaker,” he said.
Oscar-winning Palestinian director Basel Adra says Israeli soldiers raided his home in West Bank
Copyright AP Photo/John Locher, File
By Evelyn Ann-Marie Dom with AP
Published on 14/09/2025 -
Basel Adra co-directed the film No Other Land, a joint Palestinian-Israeli production that chronicles the struggle by residents to stop the Israeli military from demolishing the occupied West Bank's Masafer Yatta.
Israeli soldiers conducted a raid on Saturday at the West Bank home of Basel Adra, one of the directors of Oscar-winning film No Other Land, the Palestinian filmmaker confirmed himself
Adra said soldiers had asked his wife, Suha, for his whereabouts and proceeded to search through her phone, adding that their nine-month-old daughter was home at the time of the raid.
Earlier on Saturday, Israeli settlers attacked his village, injuring two of Adra’s brothers and one cousin, the director told press agency The Associated Press (AP). Adra had accompanied his family members to the hospital, where he found out Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.
No Other Land, a joint Palestinian-Israeli production directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, chronicles the struggle by residents to stop the Israeli military from destroying the occupied West Bank's Masafer Yatta, and the gradual expulsion of its community.
Adra has dedicated his career as a journalist and filmmaker chronicling settler violence in Masafer Yatta. He described Saturday’s event 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.”
“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,” co-director Yuval Abraham said.
The West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967, following the Mideast war. Since then, Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to more than 500,000 Israeli settlers.
Palestinians seek all three to be part of an independent Palestinian state and view the continued expansion of Israeli settlements as a major obstacle to a two-state solution. Currently, around three million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank live under what seems to be open-ended Israeli military rule, with only limited parts of the territory governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed an agreement to push ahead with an illegal expansion plan in the occupied West Bank that will cut across land that the Palestinians hope would form the basis of a future state.
"There will not be a Palestinian state," Netanyahu said during a visit to the Maale Adumim settlement in the West Bank on Thursday.
The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal under international law. Last year, the International Court of Justice declared in a landmark ruling that Israel should end settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and end its occupation of those areas, as well as Gaza, as soon as possible.
Masafer Yatta
In the 1980s, the Israeli military designated Adra’s hometown, Masafer Yatta, as a live-fire training zone and ordered the expulsion of its residents, most of whom were Arab Bedouin. Despite this, roughly 1,000 residents stayed, but Israeli soldiers regularly enter the area to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards.
Since the start of Israel's war in Gaza, which began after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank during wide-scale military operations, and there has been a rise in attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers. There also also been an increase in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
No comments:
Post a Comment