Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, who featured in the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, has been allegedly gunned down and killed in the West Bank adjoining Israel.
Yuval Abraham, who co-directed the film with Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra, claimed on his X page that Israeli settler Yinon Levi had shot Hathaleen, who is also known as Odeh Hadalin and is from the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta.
“An Israeli settler just shot Odah Hadalin in the lungs, a remarkable activist who helped us film No Other Land in Masafer Yatta. Residents identified Levi, sanctioned by the EU and U.S., as the shooter. This is him in the video firing like crazy,” Abraham posted. The Israeli filmmaker included a video that apparently shows Levi with a gun in hand and in a confrontation with Palestinians.
Co-director Adra on his own X page posted the statement: “This is the settler who killed our dear friend Awdah Hathaleen. At the end of the video, he fires the bullet that took the life of Awdah. Today, the apartheid court decided to release him to house arrest. Yinon Levi, a settler sanctioned by 9 countries (now 8, because of Trump).”
The Hollywood Reporter has also independently verified that the July 28 incident that led to the death of Hadalin took place. It’s understood Levi was arrested after the shooting incident and has since been released and is now held under house arrest.
Levi is also subject to financial sanctions and a travel ban from the EU due to “serious human rights violations and abuses” first imposed in April 2024.
The U.S. under President Joe Biden in Feb. 2024 sanctioned Levi for leading violent extremist groups in the West Bank, but those measures against Levi were lifted by the Trump administration in Jan. 2025.
The No Other Land documentary, made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective and which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers. The film also centers on the filmmaking partnership between co-directors Adra and Abraham.
Another of the No Other Land co-directors, Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, was injured and detained after a conflict that took place on the West Bank in March.