Hamdan Ballal: Oscar-winning Palestinian director released from Israeli detention
Lorenzo Tondo
An Oscar-winning Palestinian director who was attacked by Jewish settlers and detained by Israeli forces has been released from detention.
Hamdan Ballal and two other Palestinians left a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, where they were being held on Tuesday. Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes.
The three had spent the night on the floor of a military base while suffering from serious injuries sustained in the attack, according to Ballal’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel.
Ballal told reporters that the settlers beat him in front of his home and filmed the assault. He said he was held at an army base, blindfolded, for 24 hours and forced to sleep under a freezing air conditioner.
“All my body is pain,” he told the Associated Press. “I heard the voices of the soldiers, they were laughing about me … I heard ‘Oscar’ but I didn’t speak Hebrew.”
Tsemel, representing the three men, said they received only minimal care for their injuries from the attack and said she had no access to them for several hours after their arrest.
Earlier this month Ballal and the other directors of No Other Land, which looks at the struggles of living under Israeli occupation, appeared on stage at the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles to accept the award for best documentary film.
Tsemel said Ballal and the other detained people had been accused of throwing stones at a young settler. They deny the allegations.
All three Palestinians were driven to a hospital in the city of Hebron.
The film’s co-director Yuval Abraham posted on X:
After the assault, Hamdan was handcuffed and blindfolded all night in an army base while two soldiers beat him up on the floor, his lawyer Leah Tsemel said after speaking with him just now.’’
Syria condemn ‘flagrant’ Israeli violation after deadly bombardment
Syria described Israeli attacks as a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty after a deadly bombardment on Tuesday in the country’s south, where Israel’s military said it had responded to incoming fire.
The violence near the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights followed Israeli airstrikes in central Syria.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Syrian foreign ministry in a statement condemned “the continued Israeli aggression on Syrian territory, which saw a dangerous escalation in the village of Kuwayya” in the southern Daraa province.
It said “heavy artillery and air bombardment targeted residential and farming areas, leading to the death of six civilians”, raising an earlier toll provided by local authorities.
The ministry said:
This escalation comes in the context of a series of violations that started with Israeli forces’ penetrating into Quneitra and Daraa provinces, in an ongoing aggression on Syrian territory, in flagrant violation of national sovereignty and international law.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the Israeli military said that its troops “identified several terrorists who opened fire toward them in southern Syria”, without providing a specific location. “The troops returned fire in response and the IAF (air force) struck the terrorists,” it added in a statement, reports AFP.
Daraa governor Anwar al-Zoabi said in a statement that “Israeli occupation army violations and repeated attacks on Syrian territory pushed a group of residents to clash with a military force that tried to penetrate” Kuwayya. The situation “led to an escalation” by Israeli forces “with artillery shelling and drone bombardment”, said the statement posted on Telegram.
Provincial authorities said 350 families had fled to shelters in a nearby village.
Houthi media in Yemen reported on Wednesday at least 17 strikes in Saada and Amran, blaming the United States for the attacks, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The rebels’ Ansarollah website said US warplanes carried out “aggressive air raids … causing material damage to citizens’ property”, but gave no details of casualties.
Washington on 15 March announced a military offensive against the Houthis, promising to use overwhelming force until the group stopped firing on vessels in the key shipping routes of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. That day saw a wave of US airstrikes that officials said killed senior Houthi leaders, and which the rebels’ health ministry said killed 53 people, reports AFP.
Since then, Houthi-held parts of Yemen have witnessed near-daily attacks that the group has blamed on the US, with the rebels announcing the targeting of US military ships and Israel.
The Houthis began targeting shipping vessels after the start of the Gaza war, claiming solidarity with Palestinians, but paused their campaign when a ceasefire took effect in Gaza in January. Earlier this month, they threatened to renew attacks in the vital maritime trade route over Israel’s aid blockade on the Palestinian territory, triggering the first US strikes on Yemen since president Donald Trump took office in January.
Last week, Trump threatened to annihilate the Houthis and warned Iran against continuing to aid the group.
Lorenzo Tondo
At least one appeal to join the anti-Hamas protests in northern Gaza was circulating on the social media network Telegram.
“I don’t know who organised the protest,” one man told Agence France-Press. “I took part to send a message on behalf of the people: Enough with the war,” he said, adding that he had seen “members of the Hamas security forces in civilian clothing breaking up the protest”.
Majdi, another protester who did not wish to give his full name, said the “people are tired”. “If Hamas leaving power in Gaza is the solution, why doesn’t Hamas give up power to protect the people?” he told AFP.
Separate clips showed dozens of people in Jabalia refugee camps, in the western part of Gaza City, burning tyres and calling for the war to end. “We want to eat,” they chanted.
Some Gaza residents said the protests could spread to other parts of the war-torn territory, whose inhabitants are exhausted and traumatised after a year and a half of conflict.
Since Hamas launched its attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, modest protests have occasionally broken out in Gaza, with demonstrators demanding an end to the war.
Many of the slogans chanted on Tuesday evoked the Bidna N’eesh (‘We Want to Live’) movement, which emerged during the 2019 Gaza economic protests. Those protests were violently suppressed by Hamas, which said they were orchestrated by its rival, Fatah.
Israel regularly calls for people in Gaza to mobilise against Hamas, which has been in power in the territory since 2007.
Hundreds join protest against Hamas in northern Gaza
Hundreds of Palestinians have joined protests in northern Gaza, shouting anti-Hamas slogans and calling for an end to the war with Israel, in what has been described as the largest protest against the militant group inside the territory since the 7 October attacks.
Videos and photos shared on social media late on Tuesday showed hundreds of people, mostly men, chanting “Hamas out” and “Hamas terrorists” in Beit Lahia, where the crowd had gathered a week after the Israeli army resumed its intense bombing of Gaza after nearly two months of a truce.
The protests took place in front of the Indonesian hospital in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Some protesters were seen carrying banners emblazoned with slogans including “Stop the war” and “We want to live in peace”.
Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli authorities released a Palestinian director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, a day after he was attacked by a group of about 15 armed Israeli settlers and detained by soldiers.
Hamdan Ballal and two other Palestinians were accused of throwing stones at a settler, allegations they deny.
More on both of these stories in a moment, but first here are some other news developments:
Houthi media in Yemen reported on Wednesday at least 17 strikes in Saada and Amran, blaming the United States for the attacks. The rebels’ Ansarollah website said US warplanes carried out “aggressive air raids … causing material damage to citizens’ property”, but gave no details of casualties.
Japan’s defence minister Gen Nakatani says his country will provide medical treatment for two Palestinian women for injuries and illnesses from the conflict in Gaza, and one of them has arrived in Tokyo. The treatments, Nakatani said, are part of Japan’s efforts to address the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza and followed a request from the World Health Organization.
At least 50,144 Palestinian people have been killed and 113,704 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
Fresh Israeli evacuation orders affect as many as 120,000 people living in heavily damaged northern Gaza, and cover two hospitals and a one primary health care center, the UN humanitarian agency said Tuesday. Israel said it ordered civilians to evacuate late on Monday because its forces need to advance into two areas where Palestinian militants recently fired rockets.
Geir Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria, told the UN security council it “must not come to pass” that Syria backslides into conflict, fragmentation, and having its sovereignty routinely violated by external powers. Pedersen said the other road, restoring sovereignty and regional security, “requires the right Syrian decisions,” but the country’s interim authorities cannot do it alone and need increased and continuing international support.
US president Donald Trump nominated conservative media critic and pro-Israel commentator Leo Brent Bozell III as ambassador to South Africa. The move on Tuesday comes during strained diplomatic relations with the country, including over its stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Syria described Israeli attacks as a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty after a deadly bombardment on Tuesday in the country’s south, where Israel’s military said it had responded to incoming fire. The violence near the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights followed Israeli airstrikes in central Syria.