At the Academy Awards earlier this month, Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was honored with his co-directors for their documentary “No Other Land,” chronicling the Israeli government’s destruction and takeover of Palestinian land in the West Bank. The same night, his village was the site of an attack by settlers.

In the weeks since, settlers have continued to return to his village, Khirbet Susya in the Masafer Yatta region, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. And on Monday, Ballal warned his family to stay inside their home then stepped out to confront a band of settlers who had started to harass other villagers just as families began to gather for iftar, according to activists with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence who responded to the incident and interviewed relatives. 

The settlers struck him in the head and stomach with clubs and rocks, then went on to attack another home, destroying water tanks and stealing security cameras, according to activists. 

“He had sent his family inside when the settlers approached — he sent them inside to keep them safe, and then he went outside to scare them off, or to send them away — that’s when he got attacked,” said Raviv Rose, an activist with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, who lives in the neighboring village of Um al-Khair and responded to the attack on Monday. 

Ballal was subsequently arrested by the Israeli soldiers who pulled him from an ambulance, along with two other Palestinian residents of Susya, Khaled Mohammad Shanran and Nasser Shreteh, peace activists said. The three men were taken to a military base in Susya where they were held overnight and expected to face interrogations Tuesday morning, the men’s attorneys had told activists. 

“This is not an isolated thing — the scale of attacks is ongoing.”

News of Ballal’s arrest spread quickly, with much of the focus on the fact the award-winning filmmaker was the victim of the very violence his documentary depicts. The attack on Susya marks the latest incident in a long pattern of violence that has only escalated in the area since the Oscars, amid an ongoing government-sanctioned annexation push to forcibly remove Palestinians from the West Bank.

“This is not an isolated thing — the scale of attacks is ongoing,” Rose said. “In Susya alone — where Hamdan and Nasser live — this stuff has happened, it feels like almost every day.”

Since the Academy Awards ceremony on March 2, where Ballal joined co-directors Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor on stage, there have been at least four other settler attacks on Susya, according to the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, along with other attacks and military demolitions in surrounding villages across Masafer Yatta.

Adra, a native of Masafer Yatta who was also featured in the film, had been documenting much of the violence near his home in recent months. In early February, days after “No Other Land” received its Academy Award nomination for best documentary, Adra reported a settler attack on Susya, in which armed settlers damaged his friend’s vehicle, slashing tires with knives, punctured water tanks, and hurled stones at houses. 

“Neither I nor anyone else could get close — they were armed,” Adra wrote in the February post sharing video of the incident. “We risked our life to film. Some settlers eventually returned to the outpost before the eyes of the police and soldiers.”

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One day after returning from the Academy Awards, Adra shared video of a settler attack at another village in Masafer Yatta, in which he said settlers sprayed residents with pepper spray, threw rocks at them, and smashed the phone of one activist. 

Rose was among the activists who responded to Susya on Monday evening to help ward off the attacking settlers who had focused their attention on a set of homes behind Susya’s school.

“We got a text and then immediately following that got multiple calls from people saying there was a settler attack at the school in Susya,” Rose said, “The calls we got were quite frantic, people were screaming, just saying, ‘There’s settlers, come, come.’”

An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson claimed that Palestinian villagers had sparked the violence, referring to them as “terrorists” who “hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles.” The Israeli military said Israelis and Palestinians then threw rocks at each other until military and police arrived. At that point, the spokesperson claimed that the villagers also started to throw rocks at authorities.

“In response, the forces apprehended three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at them, as well as an Israeli civilian involved in the violent confrontation,” the spokesperson said to The Intercept in a statement. “Among the detainees is Hamdan Bilal, who is suspected of hurling rocks at the forces.”

The Israel military disputed claims that Ballal had been pulled from an ambulance for his arrest. One Israeli citizen received medical treatment for injuries, the IDF said.

Activists told a different story, saying Israeli settlers had initiated the violence and that Palestinians had only been trying to protect themselves and their families.

When Rose arrived with four other Jewish American activists, one settler immediately charged toward the group and punched Rose in the throat, she recalled. Other settlers appeared and began to hurl rocks at the activists, breaking their car windows. Videos taken by activists show at least 10 settlers carrying sticks, shoving activists who then retreated to their car as rocks flew at them.

Israeli soldiers eventually appeared at the scene, and the settlers began to wander off. Rose and the others attempted to climb a hill toward the homes where Ballal and others live, but were obstructed by the military, she said. By the time they arrived, Rose and the group saw soldiers hauling away three men, including Ballal, in blindfolds and zip ties. A pool of Ballal’s blood remained in front of his house.

“He needed the support of two other people,” Rose said, referring to Ballal, “because he was too physically injured to walk unsupported.”

When Israeli police arrived at the scene, Rose said instead of listening to their reports of the violence, they questioned the activists and demanded to see their passports. 

Rose, who is in communication with attorneys for Ballal, hoped for the prompt release of the filmmaker and the other two men taken into Israeli custody. But even if they are freed, she worries the attacks will continue to escalate. She recalled that during the night of the Oscars, there was a settler attack on Susya in which settlers destroyed a car and tried to break into someone’s home. Some villages in the area have been wiped out through military orders, in which soldiers evict residents, and then tractors and bulldozers demolish homes and schools. Such violent scenes were extensively documented throughout “No Other Land.” 

Monday’s attack in Susya wasn’t “an isolated freak incident,” Rose said, “this is almost a daily reality.”