Israeli soldiers bar media from visiting West Bank villages on tour organized by Oscar winners

JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers on Monday barred journalists from entering villages in the West Bank on a planned tour organized by the directors of the Oscar-winning movie “No Other Land.”

The directors of the film, which focuses on Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territory, said they had invited the journalists on the tour Monday to interview residents about increasing settler violence in the area.

In video posted on X by the film’s co-director, Yuval Abraham, an Israeli soldier tells a group of international journalists that there is “no passage” in the area because of a military order. Basel Adra, a Palestinian co-director of the film who lives in the area, said the military then blocked the journalists from entering two Palestinian villages they had hoped to visit.

Israel’s military said in a statement that entry into Khallet A-Daba was banned because it was in a live-fire training zone. Tuwani is not in the firing zone, but the military said it had barred “individuals who might disrupt order from entering the area,” in order to “maintain public order and prevent friction.”

“They don’t want journalists to visit the villages to meet the residents,” said Adra, who had invited the journalists to his home. “It’s clear they don’t want the world to see what is happening here.”

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Some of the surrounding area, including a collection of small Bedouin villages known as Masafer Yatta, was declared by the military to be a live-fire training zone in the 1980s. Some 1,000 Palestinians have remained there despite being ordered out, and journalists, human rights activists and diplomats have visited the villages in the past.

Palestinian residents in the area have reported increasing settler violence since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and kickstarted the war in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards — and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.

Adra said the journalists were eventually able to enter one of the villages in Masafer Yatta but were barred from entering Tuwani, the village where he lives, and Khallet A-Daba, where he had hoped to take them.

Adra said settlers arrived in Khallet A-Daba on Monday and took over some of the caves where village residents live, destroying residents’ belongings and grazing hundreds of sheep on village lands. The military demolished much of the village last month.

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It said in a statement to AP that the structures in the village were built illegally and demolished after the residents had the chance to present their cases against demolition.

“No Other Land,” which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. The joint Palestinian-Israeli production was directed by Adra and Hamdan Ballal, another Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, along with Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The film has won a string of international awards.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for their future state and view settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution.

Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to over 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centers.