Review: 'No Other Land' gives an inside look at Palestinians being forced off their land, and offers a viewpoint not often seen
The documentary “No Other Land” chronicles life in a group of Palestinian villages on the West Bank — and if merely mentioning the setting doesn’t clue you in on the complexities of the narrative, you haven’t been paying attention.
The Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta say their families have lived on this part of the West Bank for more than a century. The Israeli officials and soldiers who occupy the land say otherwise, that the land is a training area for their tanks — and the Israeli courts have upheld that claim.
So, as the movie shows, Israeli soldiers regularly come to a house, order the residents out with barely enough time to gather their belongings, and then direct construction vehicles to tear the house down. The people living there often move into nearby caves, which anyone would agree is a poor substitute for four walls and a roof.
Two Palestinians, Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, and two Israelis, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, are the credited directors of “No Other Land.” Adra and Abraham are also two of the film’s main subjects. Adra grew up in Masafer Yatta, with parents who taught him to protest, and has filmed the destruction of his peoples’ homes for years. Abraham is a journalist based in Jerusalem, who makes repeated trips to Masafer Yatta to cover what’s happening — and to convince his Israeli editors that the story is worth pursuing.
The filmmakers make their feelings about the conflict quite clear — and whether a viewer agrees or disagrees is probably determined by one’s views of the Middle East as a whole. The Palestinians shown here are desperate, unable to win in court or in the field, risking arrest from Israeli soldiers and violence from Israeli settlers. The filmmakers depict the soldiers as rigid, their civilian leaders as uncaring and callous, and the settlers as a mob.
It’s important to note that filming for “No Other Land” started in the winter of 2019, and ended in the fall of 2023, just before the attacks by Hamas militants that killed some 1,200 Israelis and prompted airstrikes and a ground offensive on Gaza that has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead and countless numbers displaced. It’s also worth noting that some of the reasons Hamas gave for mounting their attacks — Israeli raids in the West Bank, attacks by settlers against Palestinians, and expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied lands — are the things chronicled in this film.
Does what the filmmakers show justify Hamas’ attacks? Of course not, and most everyone would say “no” — just as many would say the ferocity of the Israeli military in Gaza isn’t justified by what Hamas did. I, like the majority of Americans, don’t know enough about the long history of Israelis and Palestinians to express anything but a naive hope that a solution can be found without violence from either side.
I can also hope — again, naively — that more Americans can seek out information about this intractable conflict, including watching “No Other Land.” The movie, though it has won awards at festivals and is nominated for an Academy Award, does not have a U.S. distributor. According to The New York Times, the filmmakers are self-distributing the movie to 23 cities, including Salt Lake City, with plans of a larger rollout. Here’s hoping as many people as possible will see it.
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‘No Other Land’
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, February 21, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for violence and language. Running time: 92 minutes; in Arabic and Hebrew, with subtitles.