By JAMES MARKIN
The winner for best documentary at last weekend’s Academy Awards is a movie that most Americans aren’t able to easily watch: “No Other Land.” The Palestinian/Israeli documentary failed to find a U.S. distributor ahead of the prestigious Oscar ceremony despite being the favorite to win an award. This is not due to a lack of demand; “No Other Land”actually outpaced all of its Best Documentary rivals in box office sales through independent distributors. Instead, the lack of a distributor is just another example of how corporate America has worked to silence Palestinian narratives in the public discourse, even as the U.S. government channels billions of dollars into the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Blend of documentary journalism with activism
“No Other Land” is a unique film, a fly on the wall documentary that tells the story of the fight by Palestinians to save the rural West Bank community of Masafer Yatta from destruction by the IDF. Since the 1980s, Israel has been seeking to depopulate the area, claiming that it is needed for an IDF training zone.
This project was upheld by the Israeli Supreme Court after Palestinian families sued in the 1990s. Leaked Israeli government documents from the 1980s, however, revealed that since the beginning the IDF training zone was always an excuse used to justify Israel’s real goal of depopulating the region as part of a broader plan to expedite Israeli settlement in the area. As part of this effort, Israeli bulldozers are dispatched regularly to far-flung parts of Masafer Yatta to demolish homes, playgrounds, schools, and businesses of Palestinians, as the IDF hopes this will force them to leave their homes and farms.
The film’s co-director, the young Palestinian activist Basel Adra, is inextricably linked to the fight to defend Masafer Yatta. Old footage shows Basel’s father, Nasser, leading the struggle against the Israeli demolitions in the 1980s and 1990s. Now Basel himself has had to take up a serious degree of leadership in the fight. Despite going to school to be a lawyer, there is not enough legal work in the West Bank for Basel to make a living practicing law. So instead, Basel divides his time between helping out with his father’s rural gas station and documenting and leading protests against Israeli demolitions of homes and businesses in Masafer Yatta.
The documentary shows clearly how much his dedication to the struggle has taken a toll on Basel Adra, who tries to defuse the stress of fighting for the life of his community through heavy smoking and a near compulsive use of his phone. This is in contrast to the Israeli co-director of the film, Yuval Abraham, an Israeli who had his life changed when he learned Arabic and came to the realization that his country’s treatment of Palestinians is unconscionable. In the film, Yuval often is a used as a more somewhat-naïve, energetic and impatient foil to the dogged and often exhausted Basel. Sections of the film are dedicated to fly on the wall segments of the two men having conversations, in hookah bars, cars and around Basel’s home, where they often spend nights sprawled out next to each other in sleeping bags on the bare floor.
While Yuval’s dedication to stopping the Israeli destruction of Masafer Yatta is not questioned, some of the more interesting parts of the film interrogate his role and presence in the Palestinian community. While Basel lives in the rural West Bank and cannot leave, or even drive on roads built for Israeli settlers, Yuval has made the choice to spend much of his time there producing the documentary and writing about the situation that Basel’s community is facing. Even so, he is often able to return home to his family, almost in another reality back within Israel.
During one particularly striking moment in the documentary, as Yuval is helping out with the work of carrying heavy equipment in Masafer Yatta, he is confronted by a resident who asks how Abraham can expect to be close with Palestinians in the West Bank when “the people who are demolishing our homes could be your cousins.” Their contentious conversation is then interrupted by another resident, who calls them over to help out elsewhere, declaring that there will be time for debate when the work is done.
Home demolitions: despair punctuated by ruthless violence
Indeed, the documentary demonstrates that time is often something that the residents of Masafer Yatta lack, and much of the film is dedicated to cell phone footage shot by Basel and Yuval that documents the continued Israeli demolitions in the rural community. At one point during the film, we see one of the men who was earlier helping out and debating with Yuval, Harun Abu Aram, shot at very close range by an IDF soldier during a scuffle at a home demolition. The shooting leaves Harun paralyzed from the neck down. For the rest of the movie we are shown Harun’s mother, forced to take care of her now paralyzed son while living in a cave because their home was demolished. Harun Abu Aram died in 2023 due to bedsores and infections caused by lying on the floor of a cave, unable to move.
This is one of the most striking things about “No Other Land”—the way that it conveys the day-to-day horror of life under brutal military occupation. One day a man is in the prime of his life providing for his family and is a pillar of the community, the next day he is lying on the floor of a cave, slowly dying as his mother takes care of him and his family. “No Other Land” shows us the whole story in its most brutal detail.
We also are shown how the decades-long struggle has impacted Basel and his family, transforming their day-to-day life such that the extraordinary harassment of the IDF is mundane to them. At one point, his mother tells Basel that she has laundered his clothes so that they can be ready if he is arrested. When the soldiers come for him and his father, Basel is able to escape arrest as his family demonstrates that they have dealt with IDF arrest squads many times and have learned techniques to evade them. Basel’s father, however, is not able to escape, and Basel is forced to give up a lot of his activism work in order to take care of the family business.
This leads to a section of the film in which, while Nasser Adra is in prison and Basel is taking care of the gas station, it is Yuval who then takes on the work of confronting and documenting IDF home demolitions. Through the lens of his phone camera, we see how he is received differently by the IDF forces as a Jewish demonstrator. At one point, an angry Jewish man in civilian clothes gets in his face and promises retribution to his family for being a traitor.
Indeed, toward the end of the film, the Jewish settlers become a bigger and bigger menace to the community in Masafer Yatta. They often show up to confrontations armed and determined to cause havoc for the Palestinian community. Through Basel and Yuval’s footage we see how settler attacks are shadowed by IDF troops who do nothing to prevent the attacks, as they are there merely to discourage retaliation. The film ends with a particularly blood-curdling scene of Jewish settlers, armed with rifles, attacking the very cluster of homes where the Adra family lives.
This lack of closure in the end of the movie is a powerful call to action for those watching it. Throughout the film, the two directors discuss and debate just how much documentation and journalism can help to end the kind of vicious military and settler violence that faces Masafer Yatta. While exactly how the directors would ultimately answer this question is unclear from the film alone, from an activist perspective it does seem apparent that a film like “No Other Land” itself can do very little to change the reality on the ground. It is up to us, the viewers, who are among the working classes of countries like the United States to stop our imperialist government’s support for what Israel is doing.
At one point, Basel even directly alludes to the possibility of a potential withdrawal of U.S. support being a turning point in the struggle of Masafer Yatta. That is why, while activists should go to see “No Other Land”at whatever independent theater is showing it near them, the more important thing is to build a large and militant Palestine-solidarity movement that is capable of materially helping the people of Masafer Yatta.
