When the Palestinian-Israeli coproduction No Other Land won the Academy Award for best documentary feature film in early March, jubilation was palpable. It brought to global attention yet again Israel’s crimes as occupier and violator of Palestinian rights and showed how progressives from across the national divide collaborate to achieve common objectives.
This week, this reality was brought again into sharp relief with the assault and arrest of one of the film’s directors, Hamdan Ballal, after Israeli settlers attacked his community.
No Other Land follows the struggle of the people of Masafer Yatta, a cluster of nineteen Palestinian communities in the south of the occupied West Bank. It chronicles their ongoing fight against Israel’s attempts to dispossess and displace them through military decrees, the repeated demolition of homes and community structures, settler violence, destruction and deprivation of access to their resources, and court rulings. It also documents community struggles between 2019–2023, making use of home videos, interviews, and archival footage to tell the story of the people of Masafer Yatta’s decades-long fight for their homes, land, and lives, while also shedding light on the Israeli activists who joined and documented that struggle.
Unsurprisingly, Israeli officials, journalists, public figures, and others launched an assault on the film, frequently while stating that they have not seen it nor do they intend to. But counterintuitively, No Other Land was also attacked by some participants in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
While many lauded its role in exposing Israeli colonial practices and centering Palestinians’ steadfastness, others argued it reproduced colonial…
Auteur: Leena Dallasheh
