Last week, Israeli troops destroyed a hangar from a Palestinian family in Masafer Yatta, a distant and mountainous corner at the southern end of the West Bank occupied by Israeli.
It was the latest example of destruction targeting a collection of hamlets whose population is threatened with expulsion.
During the weekend, the residents of Masafer Yatta applauded the Oscar victory of a documentary, no other land, which represents life in the besieged community, and hoped that this would bring them help.
No other land follows the Palestinian activist Basel Adra, while risking an arrest to document the destruction of Masafer Yatta West Cisan, joined by his Israeli co -director, journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham.
The Palestinian-Israeli joint production won a series of international prizes, from the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. Five years in preparation, he won a greater resonance in the middle of the Israel genocide in Gaza, as well as growing raids in the West Bank who caused the trip of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
In Al-Tuwaneh, one of the hamlets that make up Masafer Yatta, Salem Adra said that his family had been standing overnight for the Oscar ceremony. They watched his older brother, Basel, the film’s co -director, went on stage to accept the prize for the best documentary.
“It was a huge surprise, such joy,” he said.
Salem said he hoped that Oscar victory “opens the world’s eyes to what’s going on here in Masafer Yatta”.
“It is a victory for all of Palestine and for all those who live in Masafer Yatta,” he said.
Since the film’s release, he said, threats and pressure against his family have increased. Their car was stoned by the settlers. After the film won a prize in Berlin International Film Festival a year ago, the soldiers returned again and again to the family, and once he was holding his father, searching his phone and asking: “Why are you shooting?”
The Israeli army has appointed Masafer Yatta as a live shooting area in the 1980s and ordered residents, mainly Arab Bedouins, be expelled. Israel said Bedouin did not have permanent structures in the region. But families say they have lived and developed their sheep and goats in the region long before Israel captures the West Bank in the 1967 war.
After a 20 -year legal battle of residents, the Supreme Court of Israel confirmed the expulsion order in 2022. But around 1,000 inhabitants remained largely in place, because the Israeli troops regularly demolish the houses, the tents, the water reservoirs and the olive vergers.
The Palestinians fear that the expulsion could not at any time.
In his speech of acceptance Sunday evening, Basel called on the world “to stop injustice and to stop the ethnic cleaning of the Palestinian people”.
He said that he hoped that his newborn daughter “would not have to live the same life that I live now … always feeling the violence of the settlers, home demolitions and energetic trips”.
