Israeli Soldiers Raid Home of Palestinian Filmmaker
Israeli soldiers conducted a raid on Saturday at the home of Basel Adra, a director of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land, according to the filmmaker himself. Adra confirmed the incident, revealing that soldiers questioned his wife, Suha, about his whereabouts and searched through her phone. At the time of the raid, their nine-month-old daughter was present in the house.
Earlier that day, Israeli settlers attacked Adra’s village, resulting in injuries to two of his brothers and one cousin, as reported by the Associated Press (AP). Adra accompanied his family members to the hospital, where he learned that Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.
No Other Land, a collaborative Palestinian-Israeli production directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor, documents the struggle of residents in Masafer Yatta, a community in the occupied West Bank, to resist the Israeli military’s efforts to destroy their homes and expel them from the area.
Adra has spent his career as a journalist and filmmaker highlighting the violence faced by settlers in Masafer Yatta. He described the recent events 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.”
Yuval Abraham, one of the co-directors of the film, echoed these sentiments, stating that the pattern of violence is all too familiar. “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.”
The Context of Occupation and Settlement Expansion
The West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967, following the Middle East war. Over the years, Israel has established more than 100 settlements, which are home to over 500,000 Israeli settlers. Palestinians view the continued expansion of these settlements as a major obstacle to achieving a two-state solution, as they seek all three regions to be part of an independent Palestinian state.
Currently, around three million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank live under what appears to be indefinite Israeli military rule, with only limited areas governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed an agreement to advance an illegal expansion plan in the occupied West Bank, which would encroach on land that Palestinians hope would form the basis of a future state. During a visit to the Maale Adumim settlement, Netanyahu stated, “There will not be a Palestinian state.”
Under international law, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is considered illegal. Last year, the International Court of Justice issued a landmark ruling, stating that Israel should end its settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as its occupation of those areas and Gaza, as soon as possible.
Masafer Yatta: A History of Resistance
Masafer Yatta, Adra’s hometown, was designated as a live-fire training zone by the Israeli military in the 1980s, leading to the expulsion of most of its residents, who were primarily Arab Bedouin. Despite this, approximately 1,000 people remained. However, Israeli soldiers frequently 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, killing around 1,200 people, Israel has carried out wide-scale military operations in the West Bank, resulting in hundreds of Palestinian deaths. There has also been an increase in attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers, alongside a rise in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, over 64,000 people have been killed due to Israel’s military operations in the region since the conflict began.