ACTIVISTS welcomed the release by Israeli authorities today of an Oscar-winning Palestinian director who was detained by the army after being attacked by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Mr Ballal’s film No Other Land, which he co-directed with fellow Palestinian Basel Adra and Israeli Yuval Abraham and which looks at the struggles of living under Israeli occupation, won the Academy Award earlier this month.

But Lamia Ballal, the director’s wife, said she heard her husband being beaten outside their home in the West Bank village of Susiya on Monday as she huddled inside with their three children.