On the morning of Saturday, September 13, 2025, a sense of unease swept through the small Palestinian village of Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank. For Basel Adra, an Oscar-winning Palestinian director known for his unflinching documentation of life under occupation, the day would become a chilling testament to the very violence and uncertainty he has spent years chronicling. According to multiple reports from the Associated Press and The Telegraph, Israeli soldiers raided Adra’s home, searching for him and going through his wife’s phone. The raid, Adra said, was just the latest in a series of escalating confrontations that have intensified since his film “No Other Land”—a documentary about his community’s struggle—won the Oscar for Best Documentary earlier this year.
The events of that Saturday began with violence not from the military, but from Israeli settlers. Adra recounted to the Associated Press that settlers attacked his village, injuring two of his brothers and a cousin, all of whom required hospitalization. Adra accompanied his family members to the hospital, only to receive a frantic message from relatives back in the village: nine Israeli soldiers had stormed his home, looking for him. The soldiers, unable to find Adra, questioned his wife Suha about his whereabouts and examined her phone while their 9-month-old daughter was present. They also briefly detained one of Adra’s uncles during the operation.
As Adra spent the night outside the village, unable to return home due to soldiers blocking the entrance and fearing for his own safety, he reflected on the toll of these repeated incursions. “Even if you are just filming the settlers, the army comes and chases you, searches your house,” he told the Associated Press. “The whole system is built to attack us, to terrify us, to make us very scared.” His sense of being targeted was echoed by Yuval Abraham, one of his Israeli co-directors on “No Other Land,” who told the AP, “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.”
The Israeli military, for its part, offered a different account. According to statements reported by The Telegraph and Times of Israel, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were dispatched to the area after reports that Palestinians had thrown rocks, injuring two Israeli civilians. The military said its forces were still searching the village and questioning suspects, including Adra. The IDF added: “On Saturday, a report was received regarding several terrorists who hurled rocks at Israeli civilians adjacent to At-Tuwani. As a result of the rock hurling, two Israeli civilians were injured and evacuated to receive medical treatment. Upon receiving the report, the security forces were dispatched to the scene and are currently conducting searches in the area and questioning suspects.”
Adra, however, denied that anyone from the village threw rocks or that he witnessed such actions. Instead, he insisted that settlers attacked Palestinians on their own land. Videos recorded by Adra’s cousin and viewed by the Associated Press reportedly showed settlers attacking a man identified as Adra’s brother, Adam, who was later hospitalized with bruising to his left hand, elbow, and chest. In another video, a settler can be seen chasing a solidarity activist through an olive grove, eventually tackling her to the ground. These scenes, Adra argued, were emblematic of the escalating violence his community faces, particularly since his documentary’s international recognition.
“We came back from the Oscars and every day since there was an attack on us. This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment,” Adra told the Associated Press. His co-director, Hamdan Ballal, was arrested by the IDF in March after a scuffle between Palestinians and settlers in the West Bank village of Susya, further fueling Adra’s fears that the film’s success had painted a target on their backs.
“No Other Land,” the documentary that has drawn both international acclaim and controversy, depicts the struggle of Masafer Yatta’s residents to prevent the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. The film, a joint Palestinian-Israeli production co-directed by Adra, Ballal, Abraham, and Rachel Szor, began its award-winning journey at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024 before taking home the Oscar in 2025. Its portrayal of life under occupation has not been universally welcomed: in one instance, Miami Beach officials proposed ending the lease of a movie theater that screened the documentary, reflecting the film’s polarizing effect far beyond the region.
The context of the raid and the violence that preceded it is rooted in decades of conflict over land and identity in the West Bank. Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Middle East War, and since then, has built over 100 settlements, now home to more than 500,000 Israeli citizens. The 3 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank are subject to Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority administering only certain population centers. Masafer Yatta itself was designated a live-fire training zone by the Israeli military in the 1980s, and authorities have ordered the expulsion of its residents—mostly Arab Bedouins—on multiple occasions. Despite these orders, around 1,000 residents have remained, enduring regular demolitions of homes, tents, water tanks, and olive orchards, all while living under the threat of forced expulsion.
The latest escalation comes against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Gaza. According to reports from the Associated Press, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank during wide-scale military operations since the conflict began, with a parallel rise in settler attacks on Palestinians and Palestinian attacks on Israelis. The United Nations has documented a sharp increase in settler violence since October 7, 2024, with 356 Palestinians injured and three killed in such incidents last year alone. On the other side, Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency reported foiling over 1,000 major Palestinian terror attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem during the same period.
The struggle over Masafer Yatta is emblematic of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where competing narratives and cycles of violence leave civilians caught in the crossfire. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that the IDF could evict over 1,000 Palestinians from the area, which was declared a military training zone in 1981. While Israeli authorities have cited satellite images to argue that no residential structures existed before 1980, Palestinian residents maintain their presence predates 1979, framing their fight as a battle for ancestral land and survival.
For Basel Adra, the events of September 13, 2025, were not just another chapter in a long history of conflict—they were deeply personal. As he put it to the Associated Press, “The whole system is built to attack us, to terrify us, to make us very scared.” His words, echoed by his collaborators and supported by the harrowing footage captured in his village, underscore the ongoing human cost of a conflict that shows no sign of resolution. As the world continues to watch, the story of Masafer Yatta—and the voices of those like Adra—remain a stark reminder of the power of film to illuminate, provoke, and, sometimes, to endanger those who dare to tell their truth.
