Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 03.03.2025
The Zionists are upset with the Oscar winner “No other land” that tells the truth about the cruel occupation in South Hebron. The award-winning documentary film No Other Land, focusing on Palestinians living in the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank, finally made its Jerusalem debut this month – a full year after its February 2024 world premiere at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.
Cinema Spiegel, part of Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, hosted a screening of the documentary on February 20, followed by a conversation with director and filmmaker Yuval Abraham. The film has already won numerous awards worldwide, including the Berlinale Documentary Film Award, and it was nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film at this year’s Oscars, which took place on Sunday night.
According to the Israeli human rights organization b’tselem[i]: In the early 1980s, the Zionist army declared an area of approximately 30,000 dunams in the area south of Mount Hebron, known as Masafer Yatta, “fire area 918”. At the time of the announcement, dozens of families had been living in the area for many years in about 12 small villages. Some of them since 1900. The families lived in natural or hewn caves, some permanently and some seasonally. These families lived in Safar Yatta even before Israel occupied the West Bank, and made a living from farming and grazing sheep.
In the years following the announcement, the residents continued to live in their homes almost undisturbed. Although the army reached various agreements with them that allegedly limited their access to their lands, these agreements were almost never implemented and the residents continued to live there, cultivate their land and graze their sheep throughout the year, almost without interruption.
In October and November 1999, the army expelled about 700 residents of the 12 villages in this area. The official reason for the deportation was the flimsy claim of “illegal residence in the area of fire” – ignoring the fact that these residents lived in the area for many years, before and after the occupation of 1967, with the full knowledge of all the officials.
Following the deportation, about two hundred families from the villages’ residents petitioned the High Court, through the Civil Rights Association and attorney Shlomo Leker. In March 2000, the High Court of Justice issued an interim order ordering the state to allow the residents of the villages to return to their homes and graze in their fields until the petition is decided. With the court’s encouragement, an arbitration procedure was held under the chairmanship of the former head of the Civil Administration, Brigadier General (Ret.) Dov Tsadaka. As part of the procedure, the state offered the residents to move to another area – much smaller – south of the city of Yatta, but the residents rejected the offer and at the beginning of 2005 the procedure ended.
Only on July 19, 2012, after repeatedly asking for a postponement, did the state submit its position to the High Court. In a notice, the state made it clear that it intended to destroy eight of the 12 villages in the area of fire, in which over a thousand people lived at the time. The state announced that it was ready to allow the residents to continue cultivating their land that they would give up in the area of fire on weekends, on Jewish holidays, and for two time periods of one month each during the year. Following this announcement, the court deleted the petitions, but it is possible for the petitioners to submit new petitions that will also refer to this notice.
New petitions were indeed filed in January 2013 by the Association for Civil Rights, and the High Court issued an interim order prohibiting the state from deporting the residents. The last hearing on these petitions took place in the Supreme Court on 10.8.20. The state claimed that the petitioners were not permanent residents of the area when it was declared a “firing zone.” The state again offered to “compromise” with the residents and allow them to stay in their homes for two months a year by prior arrangement, or on weekends and holidays when the army is not training there – but the petitioners rejected this.
In early May 2022, the Supreme Court rejected the petitions, after accepting the state’s arguments one by one. The decision, based on a flawed legal interpretation and selective facts, makes it clear that there is no crime that the Supreme Court justices will not find a way to legalize. In their opinion, the military commander has the authority to declare closed areas in the occupied territory, an authority that overrides the provisions of international law.
Like usual this land will be transferred to the settlers in the West Bank.
“While No Other Land may have accomplished portraying the horrors that Israel creates in the occupied West Bank, it overlooks how Israeli society at large sees the oppression of Palestinians not just as an “unfortunate reality” but rather as justified treatment.
The “antagonists” of the documentary are the Israeli army and the authorities that make the orders, but it is not brave enough to puncture through the surface to face the root of the problem: a society that by and large supports the actions of the occupation and its end goal of ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the land.” [ii]
“Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar on Monday described the Oscar win for “No other land,” an Israeli-Palestinian documentary about the demolition of Palestinian villages in the West Bank, as “a sad moment for the world of cinema.”
The Israeli right-wing religious government that Zohar belongs to is considered to be friendly towards Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, who have been accused of trying to take more land by violently evicting Palestinians from their homes.
Filmmakers Basel Adra, a native of the West Bank, and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist, used the opportunity to address the situation in the region when accepting the Oscar for “No other land” onstage during the 97th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night.”[iii]
Down with the Zionist monster!
For Palestine, red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.btselem.org/hebrew/south_hebron_hills/masafer_yatta
[ii] https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/no-other-land-documentary-captures-palestinian-spirit-fails-depiction-israelis
[iii] https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-upset-oscar-no-other-091819095.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAH3Isi9iruu5399Uk13pjmT2zYgR3Q8YkIoiRH0KLVbbCKUAzEaiz8dkAp38qzO1flouCZXu9jlhGkhqWEFqd-Tg3WhkeClWdzsEzpSbFDe0IlgS-kT0gZdcj-OY6LLaH5i9dvfvW2HO910N36v8vkNCDGOUbYRqvEUNvRV0hny7