In Susiya, daily rampage by settlers and the army
On the phone, Azam told us that since Saturday, October 7th, the settler-colonists have been on a wild rampage. The next day (he says “a day after the “disaster”) army bulldozers came and blocked all entrances to the village. Since then, the village is unapproachable by car.
Since that day and especially for the past week, colonists come 4 times a day, yell, beat on doors, curse and threaten to murder if all inhabitants of Palestinian Susia do not leave for Yatta, the neighboring town. They say “This is our land. We returned to it. Go away!”
At night they come, conduct a “search”, saying they’re looking for arms. They trash the home and leave.
A day before yesterday, a group of boys from Susya colony and other colonies ran amok undisturbed. Suddenly masked people arrived, wearing Israeli army uniforms. Azam asked for their help and were answered with yells to shut up. Don’t talk, go indoors! They enabled the colonists to pass from one home to another, go in, run rampage and threaten people. They yelled at Azam’s wife and cursed him. He has not shut an eye for over 24 hours, fearing they will be back at any moment.
Azam whispers as if to himself: I don’t get it, is this a state within a state? I don’t understand what is going on!
Today volunteers from Taayush and Breaking the Silence arrived and will stay with them in Susia. But it’s important for the media to get there. It’s important that the whole world know about the colonists’ vandalism, getting stronger with no one to stop them.
For your attention, we added an archive photo of Azam in his then well-tended Susia home…
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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