A Palestinian activist featured in a recent BBC documentary, which was praised for bringing attention to the plight of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, has been harassed by Israeli soldiers and settlers.
Israeli settlement attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem have soared, forcing Palestinians to flee their homes as the world’s attention has been drawn to Israel’s 18-month conflict there. Israeli settlers, who cite the Torah to assert their rights over Palestinian lands, are further encouraged by the lack of Israeli police action.
Issa Amro, who was featured in the documentary The Settlers, released video online showing how armed soldiers and settlers stormed his home in Hebron, West Bank, during the time that Louis Theroux, a British-American journalist and broadcaster, had been featured in.
Amro claimed that the police threatened him with arrest and told him not to file a complaint in an instance of apartheid that Israel had imposed in the West Bank. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are two organizations that accuse Israel of operating in occupied areas.
Amro added that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, was backing them when Israeli settlers attacked him on Sunday. The activist claimed that the settlers were “emboldened by the Trump administration’s blind support.”
Theroux claimed that he and his team have kept in touch with Amro frequently.
The documentary, which is a follow-up to Theroux’s 2012 film The Ultra Zionists, examines how the situation in occupied Palestinian territory has changed.
The documentary examined the significant growth of the settler population and how new military installations and Israeli infrastructure have spread across Palestinian territory, frequently with direct state support, while conducting interviews with Palestinian and Israeli figures.
It examines the religious and ideological motivations behind the Israeli expansion, which has caused numerous Palestinians to flee and engage in bloody hostility, and raises questions about the legality and morality of the occupation as judges rule that it violates international laws and standards.
You bring Jewish families [to the occupied West Bank], you lead a Jewish life, and you will experience light instead of darkness. In the documentary, Daniella Weiss, a key figure in the Israeli settler movement for decades, describes how the state of Israel was established and how we want to proceed in Gaza.
Weiss, who has received the support of a number of Israeli rabbis, claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “happy” about the settlement expansion. The West Bank and East Jerusalem have been occupied by Netanyahu, who opposes Palestinian control of Gaza.
Israeli nationals who reside on private Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are the settlers. They now number more than 700, 000. International law specifically prohibits all Israeli settlements.
The biggest obstacle to the establishment of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state living alongside Israel is seen as settlements and their expansions.
Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory was called upon by the UN General Assembly last year. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared that Israel’s presence in Palestinian territory was “unlawful” several months prior.
When Israeli soldiers approached and attempted to force him to leave the area while filming a documentary in Hebron, Theroux himself was subject to harassment as well.
Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land, was attacked by Israeli settlers in his home in Susya, West Bank, shortly after his harassment by Amro.
Late in March, armed and masked settlers attacked Ballal’s home and car, injuring him. The filmmaker was blindfolded and detained by Israeli soldiers while they were receiving medical in an ambulance. He was later unharmed and released.
Similar to Amro’s harassment on Saturday, the attack was also seen as reprisal for the documentary’s international success and its efforts to depict Palestinian struggles in the West Bank.
