What is happening in Masafer Yatta, the Palestinian village from the Oscar-winning 'No other land'?
Communities of farmers and shepherds have been fighting for decades against the destruction of homes to make way for a training area for the Israeli army.
BarcelonaNo other land, which won the Oscar for best documentary this morning after triumphing at the 2024 Berlinale, tells the story of the Palestinian community of Masafer Yatta, in the southern West Bank. It is a group of 12 villages home to some 2,500 Palestinians, most of them shepherds and farmers, who have been fighting for years against Israel's plans to destroy them and turn them into a military training zone.
Masafer Yatta is in the so-called Area C, the area of the occupied West Bank that according to the Oslo Accords remains under Israeli military and administrative control. For decades, its inhabitants have fought against orders to demolish their houses and against attacks by settlers.
In May 2022, the Israeli Supreme Court gave the green light to the displacement of more than a thousand Palestinians from Masafer Yatta, rejecting the appeal filed by the Palestinians. Settler attacks have also intensified, supported by the Israeli government's far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have given them political cover, weapons and legal immunity.
In their address to the Hollywood academics, the documentary's co-directors, Palestinian activist Basel Adra (1996) and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham (1995), explained how their friendship was born in the fight to stop plans for ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. "The film reflects the harsh reality we have lived through for decades to date and we call on the world to take serious action to end the injustice and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people," said Adra. Abraham, who exposed the use of artificial intelligence programs in the Israeli military in the bombing of Gaza, added: "When I see Bassel, I see my brother but we are not equal: we live in a regime in which I am free, under a civil law, and Bassel is under a military law that should not control him." Abraham called for "a political solution without ethnic supremacy and with national rights for both peoples."
