‘No Other Land’ Is Nominated for an Oscar, but in Masafer Yatta, We’re Still Being Erased — Opinion
Throughout the making of “No Other Land” — our documentary about the struggle and resilience of the Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta in the face of Israel’s efforts to expel us — one question persisted: Will anyone even watch this? Will anyone care?
From the moment the film premiered in Berlin last year, the answer became clear. Thousands of messages of solidarity, inquiries about how to watch it, and invitations from film festivals around the world proved that there was an overwhelming appetite to hear our story. And last month, it was even nominated for an Oscar.
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This is a tremendous achievement — not just for us as filmmakers, but for the activists, friends, and partners in the struggle who spend long hours in the field, facing violence and arrest in the fight against oppression and colonization. It is also a testament to the lawyers who persist in Israeli courts, determined to secure any means of helping Palestinians remain on their land within a system designed to legitimize the occupation.
But first and foremost, it is a victory for the people of Masafer Yatta, a collection of small villages at the southern tip of the occupied West Bank, whose resilience reflects their unwavering commitment to their land. While the occupation seeks to erase their existence, their steadfastness continues to inspire us to resist, document, and fight for justice.
Despite the exciting success of the film in festivals and among journalists and audiences around the world, however, the situation here on the ground is deteriorating rapidly and the future looks bleak. Over the past 16 months, Israeli settlers and the military have taken advantage of the atmosphere of the war to reshape reality in Masafer Yatta in favor of settlers and their outposts, intensifying their efforts to displace us from our land.
Even as I write this, the Israeli army is conducting a major demolition operation in the community of Khalet A-Daba, razing homes, toilets, solar panels, and trees.
While this editorial cannot possibly cover every recent attack or act of dispossession against Palestinian residents, I wanted to highlight some of the most notable incidents from the last few weeks to show that while we are gaining international recognition for our film, our material reality remains a daily struggle against erasure.
On the afternoon of January 25, 26-year-old Ali Awad was sitting in his parked jeep next to his family’s home when he saw six masked settlers running toward him. One carried a rifle, another a bottle of gasoline. “I wanted to start up the car and flee, but then I saw my young cousin and my elderly grandparents,” he recounted. “I got out of the car and went toward the children to move them away from the house. Then I heard glass shattering.”
When he looked back at his car, Awad saw smoke billowing from it. The settlers had set it on fire. “They knew I used it to drive children to school and transport residents to the city to get necessities since the army blocked the normal road [for non-offroad vehicles],” he explained.
After torching Awad’s jeep, the settlers shifted their attention to the barn adjacent to his house, which contained 10 tons of animal feed, and set it on fire as well. “Luckily, the fire didn’t spread,” Awad told me.
But the situation soon escalated even further. One of the settlers forcibly entered the home of Awad’s uncle, Mahmoud, while his young cousins — Jouri, 6, and Jude, 9 — were inside. “The attack lasted around 10 minutes,” Awad recounted. “The settler shattered glass in the kitchen, destroyed two cabinets, and mixed up the stores of flour and rice in the pantry. He also overturned a 100-kilogram container of yogurt onto the floor and smashed a sink.”
Later, the family discovered that the children may also have been attacked. “Jouri had a visible mark from a blow on her back, while Jude was struck on his right arm,” he said. Awad has since filed a complaint with the Israeli police about the incident, but so far received no update.
Under the shadow of Israel’s war on Gaza, the army began enforcing new restrictions on Palestinian landowners in the West Bank, requiring them to receive permission from the Civil Administration ahead of any outing to their own agricultural lands. In many cases, settlers enter these lands illegally as their Palestinian owners remain barred from them.
In the village of Qawawis, the army granted landowners, including the Hoshiyah family, permission to access their fields on January 14, but then canceled the permit without explanation only 10 minutes before they were set to begin work. A week later, on January 21, the army finally allowed the family to access their own property.
In the early morning hours of that day, the family took two tractors and went to plow their land but quickly encountered settlers. “I was near my house at around 8:30 a.m. when I saw a group of about 30 settlers from Susya, Mitzpe Yair, and nearby outposts appear and run toward Hoshiyah’s land to stop the tractors from plowing,” Taleb Al-Nu’amin, a local resident, recounted.
“The tractor driver quickly retreated back toward Qawawis to avoid the settlers, some of whom were masked and armed with batons and other weapons,” he continued. “One of the settlers punctured the tires of one of the tractors with a knife, forcing the driver to flee toward Yatta, while the other managed to hide his tractor among the community’s homes.”
Army forces and Civil Administration personnel who were present at the site “did nothing to intervene,” Al-Nu’amin emphasized. “While we called the Israeli police and informed them of the incident, the settlers brought a herd of sheep and led them into our wheat fields. Myself, my children, and other villagers shouted at the settlers to take their sheep away, but Border Police officers blocked us from approaching them.”
On February 2 at around 8 p.m., while I was at home, I received a call that settlers were attacking the village of Susiya. I quickly gathered a few friends and we drove there as fast as we could.
When we arrived, we learned that dozens of settlers had descended on my friend Nasser Nawajah’s house, pelting it with stones while his terrified family was inside. They smashed his vehicle, slashed its tires with knives, and then moved on to his brother’s house, where they punctured the water tank.
After those settlers left, about 15 more emerged from cars arriving from the nearby Jewish settlement, Susya. As they charged toward us, Nawajah called the police — who had already been notified at least 15 minutes earlier but had yet to arrive. Some settlers hurled stones in our direction, while others targeted a nearby house, smashing a parked car, destroying the security camera, and pelting the building with rocks. Inside, the terrified family locked their door and screamed for help.
Amid the chaos, my friends and I tried to document as much as we could. Finally, after 30 minutes, a police car arrived, and the settlers retreated. We shined our flashlights and shouted at the officer to detain them, but he did nothing until they had already made their way back to the outpost. By the time he went looking for them, they had already fled.
One of the settlers’ vehicles remained parked on the road, abandoned. We asked the officer to check or confiscate it, but he refused.
For many years, Israel has attempted to conceal the brutal face of its occupation with a “democratic” mask. Using various dubious legal concepts like “illegal construction” (on illegally occupied land), it has tried to demolish and erase entire Palestinian communities from lands on which they’ve existed for decades, if not centuries.
Many who watch “No Other Land” around the world are not as distant as they may think from this reality. In fact, they bear some responsibility for it. Without the support of their governments — the diplomatic cover and unconditional financial and military aid — Israel would not have been able to consistently flout international law for decades.
With this in mind, “No Other Land” wasn’t just a creative endeavor for me; it was an act of resistance. By bringing the story of Masafer Yatta — and the issue of ethnic cleansing and home demolitions in the West Bank — to audiences worldwide, we did not seek to evoke sorrow or pity, but to inspire action, and urge people to join our struggle against the occupation.
Basel Adraa is an activist, journalist, and photographer from the village of a-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills. Alongside co-directors Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, and Hamdan Ballal, he is nominated for the Best Feature Documentary Oscar for “No Other Land.”
You can find screenings of “No Other Land” near you at the film’s official website.
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