(TEL AVIV, Israel) — Three weeks ago, Hamdan Ballal stood on the stage at the Oscars, golden statue in hand, winner of the award for best documentary as the co-director of “No Other Land.” It was an inspiring moment of unity and coexistence.

On Tuesday, bloodied and bruised, he spoke to ABC News on the phone from a hospital bed in Hebron in the West Bank.

“I’m afraid,” Ballal said. “Really, I’m afraid. I feel, when they attack me, I will lose my life.”

Ballal said he was severely beaten at the hands of Jewish settlers at his home on Monday, just outside the village of Susiya.

Settlers had come into the village throwing stones and harassing residents, including his neighbor, something Ballal says had been happening with increasing frequency since his Oscar win earlier this month.

He started filming before rushing home to his family, trying to block settlers from coming into his house. That’s when the attack began, he said, with several men attacking his head and body, including hitting him with guns.

“It was a hard, hard attack,” Ballal said. “You know, I feel I will die, because this attack was so hard, I bleed from everywhere. I’m crying from deeply in my heart. I feel pain everywhere in my body. So, they continue attacking me like 15-20 minutes.”

He said that, in addition to a plainclothes settler, there were two men present he described as “soldiers with guns,” although he could not say for sure who they were or which Israeli authority they might have represented.

The Israel Defense Forces and Israel Police have denied being involved in any beating.

Israeli authorities said that Ballal was detained along with several others on suspicion of throwing stones, damaging property and compromising the security of the area. A Jewish settler was arrested, as well.

The Palestinians — including Ballal — were questioned, held overnight and ultimately released “on conditions that include not contacting other people involved and self-bail,” according to a police statement.

Police say the investigation is continuing, but Ballal strongly denies he did anything wrong.

“I didn’t throw stones, I didn’t do any problems with the settlers,” Ballal said. “The settlers came attacking me and beating me. That’s it.”

Ballal’s Oscar-winning documentary focused on a community’s attempts to resist forced expulsion of Palestinians from a southern area of the West Bank by the Israeli government.

The number of Israeli settlers has dramatically increased in the West Bank in recent decades.

Palestinians, human rights groups and the United Nations have accused them of playing an unofficial role in the attempted displacement of Palestinians through the West Bank, with extremists carrying out violent attacks designed to intimidate, instill fear and ultimately force people out of a place they have called home for generations.

“The settler violence has worsened considerably since the war,” said Sari Bashi, a program director at Human Rights Watch. “The people whom the army doesn’t directly displace are left to fend for themselves among violent settlers who scare them off their land.”

Critics say the right-wing coalition of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, at best, turned a blind eye to the violence and, at worst, outright encouraged it, with the ultimate goal, according to prominent settler activists and some far-right members of the government, of annexing the West Bank entirely.

The government has denied responsibility for settler violence and has primarily blamed Palestinians for the continued unrest, though sometimes it blames settlers as well. Netanyahu’s government, which refers to the West Bank by its biblical names of Judea and Samaria, argues that the area is replete with terrorist activity that targets Israelis both in West Bank settlements and inside Israel. The government argues its actions in the West Bank are necessary to keep Israelis safe.

Activists often say that the Israeli Police and the IDF, who have security control over most of the West Bank, fail to protect them from settler attacks or adequately prosecute cases of settler violence. The IDF intervenes when scuffles between settlers and activists escalate, but prosecuting settler violence is rare. From 2005 to 2024, only 3% of more than 1,000 investigations ended in convictions, according to the nongovernmental organization Yesh Din.

The settlers often cite a deep religious imperative for their actions. Others view attacks as vengeance for deadly Palestinian terror attacks. Many routinely deny responsibility for the West Bank acts of violence that have risen in recent years but have gone on for decades.

Ballal was released from the hospital on Tuesday. ABC News asked why he chose to speak publicly if he is afraid for his life.

“I’ve been afraid like this since I was born, until now,” Ballal said. “So, I have to speak. Yes, I’m afraid, but I live this situation all my life. So I hope, I hope, because I speak with [ABC News], it can change something.”

ABC News’ Guy Davies, Mike Pappano and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.

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