Susiya - Police officer to Palestinians: Don't ask me to compare you to settlers
Police officer to Palestinians: Don’t ask me to compare you to settlers.
We traveled in the hope of reaching an area where a new settlement is causing great suffering to the Palestinians in the area. But it was not possible to get there this week. Let’s hope that next week we will succeed. That’s why we sat down with G. and W. Nawaja’h and heard from them again about what is happening around them in Susiya. G. told again about the settler Amishav Peled at his shepherd’s farm, which is visible from their house on a hill opposite, who goes down to the fields and olive groves every day to graze with the flock. The sheep and goats eat everything, the barley and wheat in the fields and the olive leaves. “We are not allowed to approach our fields. The army expels anyone who approaches.” He asked the police officer why they are not allowed to reach their lands while the settlers are allowed, why aren’t they at least detained for questioning? Police officer: Answered: Don’t ask me to compare you to others, meaning that what is allowed to them is not allowed to you. The settlers are constantly approaching the Palestinian fields. This morning, one of them, Eliyahu, a young man employed by settler Amishav Peled, came up from the wadi towards the house of neighbor H. Now, when the olives are starting to ripen, their sheep are eating everything and destroying the crop before it is ripe. Settler Shem Tov Luski, who lives in the settlement he established adjacent to the archaeological site of ancient Susiya, has a brother. His name is Luria. He received a uniform from the IDF and roams around there as much as he can. “We are constantly threatened, it is impossible to sleep in peace,” says A. On the hill opposite is another settlement, part of the growing continuum that crowns the Palestinians all the way to the old settlement of Susiya. Here live Malka and Pavel, their two sons, and every Friday and Saturday they raid the shepherds’ quarters in Rangers or motorcycles, honking and making noise just to scare them.
What a shame.
Location Description
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
Muhammad D.Jul-13-2026Michal with O.
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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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