“The cinema project has long been a dream for popular resistance activists in the Old City of Hebron. Now it is finally seeing the light.”
With these words, Issa Amro proclaimed the opening of Ahmad Film House in early December. Amro, co-founder of the cinema and of Youth Against Settlements (YAS) — a non-violent Palestinian rights movement based in Hebron — was addressing a crowd of dozens of Palestinians as well as Israeli and international activists packed into a small gray room lined with rows of plastic chairs.
The cinema is named after Ahmad Amro, Issa’s brother, a human rights defender and YAS volunteer who died in 2023 from a blood clot after years of complications from diabetes. To inaugurate the space on the second anniversary of his death, Amro screened “Unknown Soldiers,” a series of eight short films by young first-time Palestinian directors –– one of them Ahmad himself –– who document life under occupation and the non-violent forms of resistance they practice.
“This project had always been very important to [Ahmad], but he passed away before its completion,” Amro told +972. “So we decided to name the cinema after him.”
With seating for around 70 people, Ahmad Film House is the first cinema to open in Hebron since the 1930s. Its focus is explicitly political, featuring films that highlight the Palestinian struggle. “The plan is to screen two or three films each month, depending on the conditions on the ground,” Mohanad Qufisha, a journalist and activist from Hebron involved with the project, explained.
For Amro, the cinema is a resource for activists. “We believe that cinema is part of our resistance,” he said. “We also screen films and videos for visitors and activists who come to us from different places.”
Three weeks after its opening, the cinema screened “Coexistence My Ass!,” a documentary that follows Israeli comedian and left-wing activist Noam Shuster-Eliassi, to an audience of about 30 people. In mid-January, it screened “Soldier on the Roof,” a documentary filmed among the hundreds of Jewish settlers in Hebron’s Old City and the soldiers who safeguard their presence. It will also host non-political screenings of interest to the local community, including Arab Cup soccer matches.
What is especially remarkable about the cinema is its location, which makes its very existence an act of defiance. Sitting in the same building as Amro’s private residence and YAS’s headquarters, collectively known as “Issa’s House – Hebron Freedom Center,” Ahmad Film House is located in one of the most tightly restricted areas of the West Bank known as H2 — the roughly 20 percent of Hebron that is under the direct control of the Israeli military.
The only Palestinian urban center in the West Bank governed by the Israeli army, H2 is home to approximately 35,000 Palestinians. It is also home to several hundred Israeli settlers and is crisscrossed by almost 30 permanently staffed Israeli checkpoints equipped with metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and facial recognition technology.
Palestinians who do not live in the Old City are generally barred from entering, including relatives of residents. Even those who do are prohibited from walking and driving on certain streets. Ambulances are also denied access, forcing people to carry the sick and injured on foot. These restrictions, alongside frequent closures and raids, have made daily life here for Palestinians virtually impossible and left Hebron’s economy in ruins.
Against this backdrop, the cinema’s opening carries special importance. “In H2, there are no public spaces such as cafés, so this cinema has become an important alternative space,” Ezzat Al-Karki, a local YAS activist in his 30s, told +972. “Unfortunately cinema in general is not accessible to us as Palestinians in Hebron, which makes this an extremely important opportunity.”
‘The cinema was born out of suffering’
The building itself bears the marks of Hebron’s recent history. After its Palestinian owners fled at the start of the Second Intifada, Israeli soldiers occupied it from 2001 to 2005. Settlers later made repeated attempts to seize it, including a violent storming in 2007. That year, Amro helped lead a legal and media campaign, alongside a nonviolent sit-in, that ultimately succeeded in reclaiming the building from military and settler control.
“I rented the house from the owners who were scared to come back to it, lived in it, and used it as a base for YAS,” Amro explained.
Restoring the space and figuring out how to host visitors under severe movement restrictions took years. After October 7, the surge in state-backed settler violence and tightened closures made opening the cinema even more difficult. “The cinema was born out of suffering,” Al-Karki said.
Over the past two years, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the number of movement obstacles in and around H2 climbed to 98. According to Amro, only four are typically open, at arbitrary hours.
“There are occasions when we leave the checkpoint toward the city, and upon returning we find it closed, forcing us to wait for several hours,” Amro explained. “In many instances, soldiers prevent international activists from crossing the checkpoint and reaching our location.”
Bayan Haddad, an English literature lecturer at Birzeit University from Hebron who attended the “Coexistence My Ass!” screening, described the journey to the cinema as difficult. “The road is not safe due to the presence of checkpoints, soldiers, and settlers,” she said.
Since the start of the Gaza war, the cinema has also been subjected to a spike in attacks by settlers and soldiers. On the morning of May 25 last year, Qufisha was on his way to pick up a Dutch diplomat from a nearby checkpoint when four soldiers stopped him.
They forced him face down on the ground and demanded access to his phone. When he refused, citing the illegality of the order, a soldier responded, “I am the law here,” and threatened to break it open. “He then kicked me hard in the head and pressed his foot on my body,” Qufisha recalled.
Fearing for his life, he unlocked the phone. As the officer searched it, he hurled insults and threats: “You are a journalist, you are with Issa; tell the others that I will kill them, and I will kill you too.”
On the second anniversary of October 7, soldiers stormed the center again. Only one activist, Mohammad Al-Natsheh, was present. When he began filming, they arrested him.
“Approximately 30 soldiers took turns beating him mercilessly for hours,” Qufisha said. “The assault was so brutal that he lost consciousness.” The soldiers later wrapped him in aluminum foil and loaded him into their jeep. “At that moment, we truly believed he had been killed,” Qufisha added.
Shortly after, settlers arrived at the center and began taunting Amro. “They began shouting at Issa, saying, ‘We killed your son,’ mistakenly believing that Mohammad was his son,” Qufisha went on. “They laughed, celebrated, sang, and deliberately provoked us, as if our pain were a source of entertainment to them.”
Al-Natsheh was eventually released from a police station in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc and taken by Palestinian ambulance to a hospital. “His body was covered in bruises, wounds, and clear marks of the severe beating he had endured,” Qufisha recounted. Since then, he has been barred from passing through the checkpoint to access Hebron’s Old City and the cinema.
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Just over a month later, Amro posted a video showing three settlers from the nearby settlement of Admot Yishai attempting to climb onto the roof of the building with flammable materials, presumably to set fire to it. “If I had not heard the noises outside and discovered them on time, they would have carried out the crime they had planned,” Amro suspected.
In late December, settlers from the same settlement began throwing stones at those in the building. “These settlers did not stop harassing us in the two weeks [after the cinema opened], with attacks occurring almost daily,” he said. Soldiers also frequently raid the center, present orders declaring the area a closed military zone, and force activists present to leave. “We feel, in practical terms, that the area has effectively been annexed,” Amro said.
Nevertheless, by showcasing Palestinian creativity, the theater offers some respite. “It is important for us to come together at a time when the occupation is working relentlessly to fragment and separate us,” Haddad said. “Cultural centers are creating spaces for people to meet, engage in cultural dialogue, and attend film screenings, and this is essential.”
In response to +972’s request for comment, the IDF spokesperson stated: “Decisions regarding the placement, opening and closing of checkpoints are made in accordance with operational assessments and security considerations only. The placement of the checkpoints is intended to enable operational control and effective defense of the entire area. The checkpoint policy changes and is adapted to the situation on the ground, balancing between security needs and the possibility of movement in the area. In cases where there is a need for ambulances to pass through the area, the passage is coordinated through the District Coordinating Office. The events described in the article are unknown except for an incident from October 2025, in which a suspect who filmed the force was detained near the house in question. The IDF and the security forces view and condemn acts of violence of any kind with severity and act decisively against the perpetrators of these acts in cooperation with the security agencies – the Israel Police and the Shin Bet.”
