Al -Paseh, Bucket – Last week, Israeli troops arrived and knocked down the shed of a Palestinian family in this remote mountain corner of the West Bank, the residents say. It was the last instance of destruction aimed at a collection of villages whose population is threatened with expulsion.
The Palestinians in the Masafer Yatta area cheered the Oscar Win of The Documentary “No Other Land” What life represents in the besieged community and expected to bring you some help.
In Al-Tuwaneh, one of the villages that make up Masafer Yatta, Salem Adra, said his family was awake all night for the Oscar ceremony. They saw as their older brother, Basel Adra, the co -director of the film, took the stage to accept the best documentary award.
“It was a big surprise, so much joy,” he said.
“No other land” follows Basel to Adra while running the risk of arrest to document the destruction of Masafer Yatta at the southern end of The West Bank occupied by IsraelTogether with his co -director, journalist and Israeli filmmaker, Yuval Abraham.
He Palestinian-Israeli joint production He has won a series of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. Five years under development, he won a greater resonance in the midst of the devastating Israel military campaign in Gaza that forced almost its entire population to their homes, as well as growing in the West Bank that has caused the displacement of tensioners of milestays of the Palestinians.
At the same time, the film has raised hackles in Israel, marked by the bloody October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that triggered war.
Salem Adra, who sometimes helped his brother to the film for the film, said he expected the Oscar to win “open the eyes of the world to what is happening here in Masafer Yatta.”
“It is a victory for every Palestine and for all those who live in Masafer Yatta,” he said.
He said that since the film was released for the first time, threats and pressure against his family have increased. His car has been drugged by the settlers. After the film won a prize at the Berlin International Film Festival a year ago, the military returned to the family home again and again, and once arrested their father, looking for his phone and asking: “Why are you filming?”
The Israeli army appointed Masafer Yatta as a living fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered that residents, mostly Bedouin Arabs, were expelled. Israel said that the Bedouins had no permanent structures in the area. But Families say they have lived And they walked their sheep and goats throughout the area before Israel captured Bank in the Middle East War of 1967.
After a 20 -year legal battle by the residents, the Supreme Court of Israel trusted the expulsion order in 2022. The around 1,000 residents have remained in place in place, but the troops regularly move to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards, and the Palestinians fear that direct expulsion could come at any time.
Salem Adra said that the last destruction came on Wednesday, when the troops knocked down the shed of a family in a nearby village.
Standing on a stony crest about Al-Tuwaneh, Salem Adra said that the Jewish settlers backed by the military have established 10 advanced positions around the village since October 7, 2023.
Pastor Raed Al-Hamamdeh, 48, led his flock of goats through rocky land. He pointed out an advanced position, with tents and a trailer that flew the flag of an Israeli military unit, on the other side of a small valley. Farmers no longer tend to the Olive in the Valley for fear of being attacked.
Al-Hamamdeh said the army uses drones to expel herds if they get too close to advanced positions. “The settlers attack. When we deliver sheep, we cannot go far as you can see. Only to this point we can arrive, ”he said. He pointed out the rubble of a house that said the settlers had destroyed, expelling the family and burning their furniture.
In Israel, the film attracted little attention from the media since its launch, and what attention received has been angry. When he won the documentary prize at the Berlin Festival, its Israeli director Abraham was criticized for an acceptance speech that requested the end of the war in Gaza without mentioning Hamas’ initial attack and taking the hostages in Gaza.
In his Oscar’s acceptance speech, Abraham spoke of both. But that did little to calm criticism in Israel. The Minister of Culture and Sports, Miki Zohar, described the victory “a sad time for the world of cinema.” He said that the film distorted reality and accused its creators of using Israel’s “defamation” as a way of helping to promote the documentary.
In general, Israeli films that are nominated for prestigious international awards receive boastful praise in Israel.
But after Hamas attack, “everyone is mourning or in trauma, we can barely hear any other voice about any other topic,” said Raya Morag, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who specializes in cinema and trauma, last week.
On Monday, he said that it was not yet clear if victory will bring more attention to the documentary in Israel. But, he said, “it will not be possible for people to ignore the message of the two directors, even for people who have not seen the film.”
In his acceptance speech on Sunday night, Basilea Adra asked the world “to stop injustice and stop the ethnic cleaning of the Palestinian people.”
He said he hoped that his newborn daughter “did not have to live the same life that I am living now … always feeling violence of settlers, demolitions at home and blunt displacement.”
On Monday, his brother Salem walked from La Cresta along with his 4 -year -old son to a family home.
He reviewed the CCTV cameras that the family has installed in the house to see the settlers. They were still filming.
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AP Omar Akour writers in Amman, Jordan and Melanie Lidman and Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
