On Saturday, September 13, 2025, the quiet of Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank was shattered when Israeli soldiers raided the home of Basel Adra, the Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker whose recent documentary, No Other Land, has brought international attention to the region’s struggles. The incident, which unfolded amid escalating tensions and violence in the West Bank, has again spotlighted the fraught reality of daily life for Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation.
According to The Associated Press and multiple corroborating sources, the raid took place while Adra was away from his home, accompanying two of his brothers and a cousin to the hospital after they were injured in an attack by Israeli settlers earlier that same day. Nine Israeli soldiers entered Adra’s house, searching for him and questioning his wife, Suha, about his whereabouts. The soldiers went through Suha’s phone while the couple’s nine-month-old daughter was present, a detail that Adra later described as deeply distressing.
"Even if you are just filming the settlers, the army comes and chases you, searches your house," Adra told The Associated Press. "The whole system is built to attack us, to terrify us, to make us very scared." His words echo the ongoing anxieties of many in Masafer Yatta, a region that has become a focal point of both settler violence and military operations.
Adra’s account is further supported by video evidence. Footage filmed by his cousin and reviewed by The Associated Press shows settlers attacking Adra’s brother, Adam Adra, who was later hospitalized with bruising to his left hand, elbow, and chest. Another video captures a settler pursuing a solidarity activist through an olive grove before tackling her to the ground. These incidents, Adra insists, are part of a broader pattern of intimidation and violence.
After the hospital visit, Adra learned from family members that his home had been stormed by soldiers. One of his uncles was briefly detained during the raid. Unable to return to his village that night due to soldiers blocking the entrance—and fearing detention himself—Adra spent the night outside his home, anxiously awaiting news of his family’s safety.
The Israeli military offered a different account, stating that soldiers were present in the village because Palestinians had thrown rocks, injuring two Israeli civilians. Military forces, they said, were searching the area and questioning residents. Adra, however, categorically denied that anyone from his village had thrown rocks, maintaining that it was settlers who attacked Palestinians on their own land.
Co-director Yuval Abraham, who worked with Adra on No Other Land, expressed his alarm at the unfolding events. “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,” Abraham told reporters. The cycle of violence, he argued, is both predictable and deeply entrenched.
No Other Land, the documentary at the heart of Adra’s recent international acclaim, is a joint Palestinian-Israeli production that also involved Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. The film chronicles the struggle of Masafer Yatta’s residents to prevent the Israeli military from demolishing their villages—a struggle that, as Saturday’s events highlight, remains very much ongoing. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024, won the Oscar for best documentary in 2025, and has since collected a string of international awards. Yet, its success has also made Adra and his co-creators more visible targets. After a previous attack on his co-director Hamdan Ballal in March, Adra told The Associated Press that he felt they were being targeted more intensely since winning the Oscar.
The roots of Masafer Yatta’s predicament stretch back decades. In the 1980s, the Israeli military designated the area as a live-fire training zone and ordered the expulsion of its residents, most of whom are Arab Bedouin. Despite this, around 1,000 people have remained, enduring regular demolitions of homes, tents, water tanks, and olive orchards by Israeli forces. The threat of outright expulsion looms, and the community’s resilience is constantly tested.
Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza on October 7, 2023—triggered by Hamas-led militants attacking southern Israel and killing approximately 1,200 people—violence in the West Bank has intensified. Israeli military operations have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians, and there has been a marked increase in settler attacks on Palestinian communities. Palestinian attacks on Israelis have also surged. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, upwards of 64,000 people have been killed in the enclave due to Israeli military operations since the start of the war.
The broader context is one of enduring conflict and contested claims. Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and East Jerusalem, during the 1967 Mideast war. More than 100 settlements have since been established in the West Bank, now home to over 500,000 Israeli settlers with full Israeli citizenship. Meanwhile, approximately 3 million Palestinians live under what many describe as open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering only the main population centers.
The question of settlements remains a central obstacle to peace. Palestinians seek the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza as part of a future independent state, and view the continued expansion of Israeli settlements as a major impediment to a two-state solution. Just two days before the raid on Adra’s home, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Maale Adumim settlement and signed an agreement to further expand settlements in the West Bank. “There will not be a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu declared, underscoring a hardening of Israeli policy that many international observers consider illegal under international law.
Indeed, the International Court of Justice ruled last year that Israel should end settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and bring its occupation of those territories, as well as Gaza, to a close as soon as possible. Yet, on the ground, the situation remains as fraught as ever, with each new incident—like the raid on Adra’s home—serving as a stark reminder of the daily realities faced by those living in contested territories.
For Basel Adra, the events of September 13 were not only a personal ordeal but also a continuation of the very struggles he has spent his career documenting. As he put it, “Even if you are just filming the settlers, the army comes and chases you, searches your house.” For many in Masafer Yatta and beyond, the hope is that international attention—sparked by films like No Other Land—will one day translate into meaningful change. Until then, the cycle of violence and uncertainty endures, shaping the lives of all those caught in its shadow.