TEL AVIV — Israeli forces have released Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, his lawyer said Tuesday, a day after his co-director said Ballal had been beaten by Israeli West Bank settlers and arrested.
Lea Tsemel, Ballal’s lawyer, told NBC News that Ballal and two other people were accused of throwing stones, adding that they denied any wrongdoing.
“They were not charged. They were suspected. That’s why they were released,” Tsemel said.
Activists reported Ballal missing Monday and said that he sustained injuries to his head and stomach in the Palestinian village of Susiya, Masafer Yatta, after violence broke out in the area.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said Monday that “clashes” developed after several people “threw stones at Israeli civilians and damaged their vehicles.”
The Center for Jewish Nonviolence, an organization that promotes Palestinian-led nonviolent civil resistance, which had activists on the scene, said they were attacked after they went to the village in response to “calls to come and support residents who were under attack.”
Yuval Abraham, who co-directed the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” with Ballal, said on X that Ballal was able to call an ambulance but that Israeli soldiers took him from it. Abraham was not there at the time of the attack, but he said he spoke with activists and local Palestinian eyewitnesses.
A spokesperson for the IDF said “no Palestinian who was inside an ambulance was arrested” but that Israeli forces arrested three Palestinians after “violent clashes” between Israelis and Palestinians erupted near Susiya in the Yehuda Brigade. The spokesperson did not say whether Ballal was among those in custody.
“I believe that when the police realized that they cannot prove any wrong behavior of those three people, they were released,” Tsemel said.
Ballal was among a group of people attacked by about 15 people, Tsemel said, adding that Ballal had an injury to his face.
Ballal and the two others were detained and taken to a military camp where a person who introduced himself as a doctor treated him, Tsemel said. Ballal was blindfolded and handcuffed while he was treated for his injuries, and spent the night “in a military camp blindfolded… on the frozen ground.”
A spokesperson for the IDF referred NBC News to the police. A spokesperson for Israeli Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham, winners of the Best Documentary Feature Film award for “No Other Land,” at the 97th Annual Oscars at Ovation Hollywood on March 2, 2025.Maya Dehlin Spach / Getty Images file
Abraham said Tuesday on X that Ballal “is now free and is about to go home to his family.”
Filmmaker Basel Adra, who also co-directed “No Other Land,” also shared an update on Instagram, saying Ballal is at a hospital in Hebron and “receiving treatment.”
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers and forces has soared. A focus of Israeli demonstrations since the 1980s has been Masafer Yatta, a collection of hamlets in the southern part of the West Bank that is the subject of “No Other Land.”
The film, which depicts life under Israeli occupation, won best documentary feature at the Academy Awards. In their acceptance speech, the filmmakers pleaded for an end to the conflict.
Matt Bradley and Paul Goldman reported from Tel Aviv. Minyvonne Burke reported from New York.
Matt Bradley
Paul Goldman
Yarden Segev contributed.
