[Source: AP]

Just last week, Israeli troops came and tore down a Palestinian family’s shed in this remote, hilly corner of the West Bank, residents say. It was the latest instance of destruction targeting a collection of hamlets whose population is threatened with expulsion.

Palestinians in the Masafer Yatta area cheered the Oscar win of the documentary “No Other Land,” which depicts life in the beleaguered community, and hoped it will bring them some help.

In al-Tuwaneh, one of the hamlets that make up Masafer Yatta, Salem Adra said his family stayed up all night for the Oscar ceremony. They watched as his older brother, Basel Adra, the film’s co-director, came on stage to accept the award for best documentary.

“It was such a huge surprise, such joy,” he said.

“No Other Land” follows Basel Adra as he risks arrest to document the destruction of Masafer Yatta at the southern edge of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, joined by his co-director, Israeli journalist and filmmaker, Yuval Abraham.

The joint Palestinian-Israeli production has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. Five years in the making, it gained greater resonance amid Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza that forced almost its entire population from their homes, as well as increasing raids in the West Bank that have caused the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

At the same time, the film has raised hackles in Israel, scarred by the bloody the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that triggered the war.

Salem Adra, who at times helped his brother film for the movie, said he hoped the Oscar win “opens the world’s eyes to what’s happening here in Masafer Yatta.”

“It’s a win for all of Palestine and for everyone who lives in Masafer Yatta,” he said.

He said that since the film was first released, threats and pressure against his family have increased. Their car has been stoned by settlers. After the movie won an award at the Berlin International Film Festival a year ago, the military returned over and over to the family home, and once detained his father, searching his phone and asking, “Why are you filming?”

The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouin, to be expelled. Israel said the Bedouin did not have permanent structures in the area. But families say they have lived and herded their sheep and goats across the area long before Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war.

After a 20-year legal battle by residents, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld the expulsion order in 2022. The around 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, but troops regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards — and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.

Salem Adra said the latest destruction came Wednesday, when troops tore down the shed of a family in a nearby hamlet.

Standing on a stony ridge above al-Tuwaneh, Salem Adra said Jewish settlers backed by the military have set up 10 outposts around the village since Oct. 7, 2023.

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