Witnesses describe settler attack on Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal

Witnesses of Monday’s attack on Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, told The National about the moment more than a dozen masked Israeli settlers, some armed, descended on the filmmaker’s home village of Susiya in the occupied West Bank. The assault ended with Ballal’s arrest, along with that of two other Palestinians, by Israeli forces. He was being given medical treatment in an ambulance when he was detained, the witnesses said. The two others detained were also injured, and all three were being held at the Kiryat Arba police station, their lawyers told the Centre for Jewish Nonviolence (CJNV), an activist group whose members tried to assist Ballal.