Why does the IDF prevent media from entering if it is confident in its rightness?
We went to visit Najah and her husband Abu Saddam after they had been violently attacked great by settlers, especially Shem Tov Luski who lives near the ancient Susiya site. In recent months he, his family, and the hilltop youth have been rampaging there, threatening and hounding the Palestinians most aggressively.
We bought groceries for them at a small supermarket in the Bedouin settlement of Umm Batin near Omer, where it’s cheaper than in Israel and this we did thanks to your donations. First, we met a man from the Ramadin area to whom every two months we give a sum of money to buy groceries in his area, where our money has greater purchasing power. It’s embarrassing and disturbing how much he thanked us saying that he now has with what to buy for the holiday, Eid al-Adha.
When we got to Susiya, it turned out that the injured couple had gone to the Yatta clinic to treat their injury. Fortunately, Paula met them the next day and gave them our shopping.
So we went to the neighbours, Azzam Wadha. The noble and gentle Azzam speaks excellent Hebrew and describes their lives well now.
And this is what he said:
First, he talked about the incident of the army detaining journalists the day before. He says that there were also people from the PA with them who had wanted to visit a-Tuwani and they were not allowed to do so.
In a side note, my innocent question is:
Why does the IDF prevent the media from entering if it is as confident in its justice as it says. Why not? It should be clear to the security forces that they are incriminating themselves with their behaviour.
Azzam continues to describe the routine of harassment by two settlers who live next door, Shem Tov Luski and Amishav Peled. Every day they and their boys come with their herds and enter the Nawaja’a family’s land with shouts and threats telling to leave, that it is not theirs, that they are there temporarily, etc., etc.
He shows us a document, which they received on August 5th, that states that anyone who does not live there and/or is staying there illegally is prohibited from entering, including Israeli citizens and citizens from abroad.
It also says that the security forces have the authority to prevent their entry at their discretion. The vague wording could also be interpreted as a prohibition on settlers from reaching there, but when the police arrived after he had called them, they first of all turned away the Palestinians who have been living there for ages. They do nothing to the settlers and claim that it is a forged document and show a regulation number as if it were some date. The wording is so vague that even the police can understand it any way they want to.
When we read it together, I showed Azzam that if it is fake, it is impossible to prohibit citizens and foreigners from staying there as written in the document. The document is attached and also includes a photograph of the entire area marked as Nawaja’a lands, to which foreigners are prohibited from entering.
In short, the document is vague and embarrassing, and none of the law enforcement officers enforce it as written. And yet, overseas volunteers are almost never there now. Even when we arrived, he was stressed and we promised not to stay there for a long time. In fact, when we left, we saw a police car approaching from afar.
Azzam says that during the time that Lieberman was defence minister, they were vandalized 7 times and attempts were made to actually deport them. “Why me, I was born here and raised here. Is it forbidden to be here?” he asks. “Why doesn’t Nasser Nawaja’a’s father, who is 85 years old and was born here, deserve to live here and build the family homes here?” Why really?
It turns out that since Lieberman left, they have had years of peace. This case was closed and they could harvest their olives, cultivate their fields and graze their herds without interference.
Until October 7th.
And since then, about 3 months after that terrible day, 3 masked men arrived at the entrance to Azzam’s house and started shouting, “You are temporary here, everything is ours, you are not allowed to go more than 50 meters away from the house.”
Since then, every attempt we have made to leave 200-300 meters from the house has been met with an encounter with the settlers and they evict us.
“I don’t know who they are or what they are because they are always masked and arrive in civilian cars, a feeling of complete lawlessness”.
Location Description
A-Tuwani
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A-Tuwani
The locals came to a-Tuwani during the 20th century from the village of Yatta. They settled in abandoned ruins, utilizing the arable land, pastures for grazing sheep and the abundance of natural caves for habitation. The residents who settled in the caves came from families who could not purchase land for houses in the mother villages, as well as shepherds who did not have enough land to graze. They were joined by clan members who quarreled with other families in the mother locality.
Some of the residents today live in concrete buildings built above the caves. In the area of the village are several water cisterns and an ancient water well called 'Ein a-Tuwani. Local residents are forced to buy water in containers and transport them through many road blocks to the village. With the help of international organizations, an electrical system was installed in the village. In the late 90s of the 20tTh century, an elementary school was established in the serving several small villages in the area.
In 2004, MachsomWatch began visiting and reporting from the Khirbet Tuwani cave village, which suffers badly from the settlers of nearby outposts, and especially from the extremist Ma'on outpost. . The settlers contaminate cisterns, poison the flocks and uproot trees.Particularly notable is the harassment of children from the surrounding villages on their way to school in a-Tuwani, so much so that military escort of children is required to separate them from the attackers (this was arranged following an initiative of the organization's members). In the past year, the escort has been without the vital presence of overseas volunteers.
Near a-Tuwani there are several families who have returned to the caves due to the incessant demolitions of the civil administration (as there is a total construction ban in all of area C). Destroyed are not only residential and agricultural buildings, but also water pipes, machinery. Even water cisterns are clogged up. a-Tuwani residents have created an association for non-violent demolition protests, but in the past year the army’s harsh harassment and settler violence have intensified and escalated. The incident of the small generator confiscation, which left a young man paralyzed, is one of many examples - any legitimate protection of property rights leads to violence and even shootings by the army and the civil administration.
Updated April 2022
Michal TsadikJul-25-2025The interior of the burnt house
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South Hebron Hills
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South Hebron Hills
South Hebron Hills is a large area in the West Bank's southern part.
Yatta is a major city in this area: right in the border zone between the fertile region of Hebron and its surroundings and the desert of the Hebron Hills. Yatta has about 64,000 inhabitants.
The surrounding villages are called Masafer Yatta (Yatta's daughter villages). Their inhabitants subsist on livestock and agriculture. Agriculture is possible only in small plots, especially near streams. Most of the area consists of rocky terraces.Since the beginning of the 1980s, many settlements have been established on the agricultural land cultivated by the Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills region: Carmel, Maon, Susia, Masadot Yehuda, Othniel, and more. Since the settlements were established and Palestinians cultivation areas have been reduced; the residents of the South Hebron Hills have been suffering from harassment by the settlers. Attempts to evict and demolish houses have continued, along with withholding water and electricity. The military and police usually refrain from intervening in violent incidents between settlers and Palestinians do not enforce the law when it comes to the investigation of extensive violent Jewish settlers. The harassment in the South Hebron Hills includes attacking and attempting to burn residential tents, harassing dogs, harming herds, and preventing access to pastures.
There are several checkpoints in the South Hebron Hills, on Routes 317 and 60. In most of them, no military presence is apparent, but rather an array of pillboxes monitor the villages. Roadblocks are frequently set up according to the settlers and the army's needs. These are located at the Zif Junction, the Dura-al Fawwar crossing, and the Sheep Junction at the southern entrance to Hebron.
Updated April 2022
Michal TsadikJul-25-2025The interior of the burnt house
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Susiya
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Susiya The Palestinian area lies between the settlement of Susya and a military base. The residents began to settle in areas outside the villages in the 1830s and lived in caves, tents and sukkot. To this day they maintain a traditional lifestyle and their livelihood is based on agriculture and herding. Until the 1948 war, the farmers cultivated areas that extended to the Arad area. As a result of the war, a significant portion of their land left on the Israeli side was lost. After the 1967 war and the Israeli occupation, military camps were established in the area, fire zones and nature reserves were declared, and the land area was further reduced. The Jewish settlement in Susya began in 1979. Since then, there has been a stubborn struggle to remove the remains of Palestinian residents who refuse to leave their place of birth and move to nearby town Yatta. With the development of a tourist site in Khirbet Susya in the late 1980s (an ancient synagogue), dozens of families living in caves in its vicinity were deported. In the second half of the 1990s, a new form of settlement developed in the area - shepherds' farms of individual settlers. This phenomenon increased the tension between the settlers and the original, Palestinian residents, and led to repeated harassment of the residents of the farms towards the Palestinians. At the same time, demolition of buildings and crop destruction by security forces continued, as well as water and electricity prevention. In the Palestinian Susya, as in a large part of the villages of the southern Hebron Mountains, there is no running water, but the water pipe that supplies water to the Susya Jewish settlement passes through it. Palestinians have to buy expensive water that comes in tankers. Solar electricity is provided by a collector system, installed with donation funds. But the frequent demolitions in the villages do not spare water cisterns or the solar panels and power poles designed to transfer solar electricity between the villages. Updated April 2021, Anat T.
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