The co -director of Hamdan Ballal recounts the attack against the Oscar winner’s house

Three weeks ago, Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal stopped in front of the world cameras in Hollywood, collecting an Oscar for the best documentary.

The cameras were looking at him again on Tuesday, a hand to the bruised face, while walking awkwardly with blood stained clothes after almost 24 hours in Israeli detention.

The night before, he told the journalists that they had gathered outside: “Students and soldiers (they were) attacking my house.” They started “hitting me and threatening me with weapons,” he added, in appointments informed by the AP news agency. The soldiers, he said, shot three times in the air.

Detention, where he said he had bandaged eyes and had a cold air conditioning, the soldiers joked about him being an Oscar winner.

A short time before, outside the Hilltop farm that he shares with his wife and children, a gray family car sits on flattened and cut tires, with their broken windows and the windshield wiper they started.

It is a sign of the severity of violence on Monday night, here at the edge of Susya in Southern occupied the West Bank.

The co -director of Hamdan, Basel, Adra, is out of the house on his phone, nervously trying news of his friend’s arrest. He tells me how he learned problems to start last night and came to help.

“I saw about 15 settlers destroying one of the houses and breaking the car, stabbing water tanks and throwing rocks to anyone who moves.

“It was dangerous. I was afraid for my life. I began to tell the people who flee. We started running in different directions.”

He says that Hamdan locked himself and tried to protect his family, but realized that he was bleeding and needed emergency medical help. Then he was arrested.

Hamdan is a well -known journalist and activist. The colleagues say that the settlers have been attacked in the past.

Israel’s defense forces say that Monday’s violence began when “terrorists threw rocks to Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles.”

“After this, a violent confrontation broke out, which implied the mutual outburst of the rock between Palestinians and Israelis.”

Josh Kimelman also came to help. He is a 28 -year -old American who lives in the West Bank for three months with the Jewish non -violence center. He disputes the version of the IDF of how violence began.

“What I know is that there were Palestinian shepherds who were harassed by settlers and then a mafia of settlers began attacking houses here.”

Josh, New Jersey, describes how they attacked their car and colleagues when they arrived.

“Our three friends left the car and were immediately attacked by the settlers,” he says.

“There was one that started it and then a mafia followed a mafia of about 15 to 20 masked settlers. They put one of my friends on the face and neck, and hit another with a stick and pushed it. And they began to throw rocks into our car.”

Josh feels that violence began deliberately.

“This attack is likely to be planned. It was definitely coordinated. You do not get a multitude of 20 settlers attacking in the way they did without any prior planning, so they had specific people in mind.”

Basel Adra says that the violence of the settlers has increased here in recent months.

“There have been 45 attacks since the beginning of the year, only in this small town, not throughout the Yatta mass.

“That is like hundreds of attacks, every day something that happens in the community, leaving us living with fear and crazy.

“We are innocent, people living in our houses surrounded by these terrorist settlers with weapons, with cars, with the army and the police that do not support us.”

Basel has just heard the news that Hamdan is about to be discharged after paying bail, but goes to the hospital to receive additional treatment before returning home.

Basilea shows me the statue of the Oscar that appeared earlier this month to a world of distance in Los Angeles. I had great hope that such global recognition could help improve people’s lives here.

“It’s disappointing,” he says. “The film reached the biggest stage in the world, the name of Musafa Yatta was known, but that does not help us on the ground here.”