Documentary | Length: 92 mins (1 hr 36 mins) | Topic: West Bank Israeli terrorism + Ethnic Cleansing
Directed by Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor
Official Trailer: https://nootherland.com/trailer | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pI2IXKtlew
Official Website: https://nootherland.com
Tour dates / Film Screenings: https://nootherland.com/buy-tickets
Watch via: Fandango | Just Watch listing for updates on where to watch it
Why We Recommend This:
If you think this conflict is all about Hamas, and that getting rid of Hamas would end the conflict, this film will dispel that misconception.
This Oscar Award-winning documentary is based in the West Bank, which is not under the authority of Hamas, and tells the heartbreaking story of the horrors visited upon Palestinians by Israeli settlers and military personnel in the years before October 7, 2023.
“No Other Land” is grounded in the heart-warming friendship between a Basel, a Palestinian human rights activist and Yuval, an Israeli journalist of the same age but born to different set of legal rights and opportunities.
The story takes place in Masafer Yatta, a beautiful mountainous region home to twenty ancient Palestinian villages, in the southern West Bank. In 1980, the Israeli military declared the land of Masafer Yatta a “closed military training” zone, in violation of International Law. This designation was used as a pretext for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages. This documentary sheds light on the systematic policy of forced expulsion through home demolitions. See for yourself how “cruelty is the point” perfectly applies to the Israeli regime’s policies and the actions of “the world’s most moral army”.
Film Descriptions:
“For half a decade, Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, films his community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel’s occupation, as he builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist who wants to join his fight.” — dogwoof
“Masafer Yatta is a beautiful mountainous region dotted with twenty ancient Palestinian villages, on the Southern edge of the West Bank. The villagers there lead a farming lifestyle, many live in old stone structures and caves. The small hamlets appear on maps from before the establishment of Israel, yet the Israeli occupation doesn’t recognize their existence. The villages were erased from Israeli maps.
In 1980, the Israeli military declared the land of Masafer Yatta a “closed military training” zone – meaning it was officially declared off limits for Palestinians. As later revealed in two secret Israeli state documents, Ariel Sharon, former Israeli Prime Minister, then Agricultural Minister, explained at the time that this was done to displace the villages and allocate their land to Israeli settlements, Basel Adra, the film’s director, was born in one of these villages in 1996. Three years later, in 1999, the military ordered all Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta to leave, so soldiers could use their land as a military training ground.
That’s how a struggle began to save the villages from expulsion, led by Basel’s parents and neighbours. The Palestinian residents of the area, who have no voting rights and are living under occupation, also approached a group of Israeli lawyers, who petitioned Israel’s high court against the forced expulsion in 2000.
In 2022, after a two decade long legal battle, the high court gave the military a green light to carry out the expulsion – which is the largest single act of forced transfer carried out in the West Bank since it was occupied in 1967. The decision to destroy the Palestinian villages and evict around 1,800 people so the military can use their land for tank training exercises triggered worldwide condemnation and is considered by many, including Amnesty International and UN Human rights experts, to be a war crime.
One way the military carries out this expulsion is by a policy of systematic home demolitions. The Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank rejects more than 98% of Palestinian requests for building permits, while allowing settlers in the area to build freely. This colonial policy uses military law to force entire families in Masafer Yatta to leave their historical lands – since they are unable to build anything legally. All of their homes, schools, water wells, and roads are considered “illegal” by the army and marked for destruction. Their mere existence, on their private land, is illegal.
Our film is the first documentary to shed light on the systematic policy of forced expulsion through home demolitions. When homes are destroyed, families in Masafer Yatta have nowhere to go, they can either rebuild, become homeless, or rent houses in crowded Palestinian cities where there is no space for grazing sheep and cultivating land. The loss of land is thus a loss of community and a way of life – they stop working as farmers …”
