Oscar-winning director Basel Adra says West Bank home raided by Israeli soldiers

Palestinian Oscar-winning director Basel Adra has said Israeli soldiers conducted a raid at his home in the occupied West Bank, searching for him and going through his wife’s phone.

He said Israeli settlers had attacked his village, injuring two of his brothers and one cousin, and he accompanied them to hospital.

While there, he said he heard from family in the village that nine Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.

The soldiers asked his wife, Suha, for his whereabouts and went through her phone while his nine-month-old daughter was at home. They also briefly detained one of his uncles, he said.

Adra said he spent the night outside the village, unable to get home and check on his family because soldiers were blocking the village entrance and he was scared of being detained.

Israel’s military said soldiers were in the village after Palestinians had thrown rocks, injuring two Israeli civilians. It said its forces were still in the village, searching the area and questioning people.

Adra said settlers attacked the Palestinians on their land and denied throwing rocks or seeing anyone from the village do so.

Videos filmed by Adra’s cousin and viewed by the Associated Press showed settlers attacking a man Adra identified as his brother Adam, who was taken to hospital with bruising to his left hand, elbow and chest.

In another video, a settler chases a solidarity activist through an olive grove, tackling her to the ground.

Adra has spent his career as a journalist and filmmaker chronicling settler violence in Masafer Yatta, the southern reaches of the West Bank where he was born.

After settlers attacked his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, in March, he told the AP he felt they were being targeted more intensely since winning the Oscar this year.

He described Saturday’s events as “horrific”.

He said: “Even if you are just filming the settlers, the army comes and chases you, searches your house. The whole system is built to attack us, to terrify us, to make us very scared.”

Another co-director, Yuval Abraham, said he was “terrified for Basel”.

He added: “What happened today in his village, we’ve seen this dynamic again and again, where the Israeli settlers brutally attack a Palestinian village and later on the army comes, and attacks the Palestinians.”

No Other Land, which won an Oscar this year for best documentary, depicts the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. Ballal and Adra made the joint Palestinian-Israeli production with Israeli directors Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The film has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad.