South Hebron Hills, Susiya
As the result of an urgent request we went to Susiya, where a very unpleasant incident took place last night. This morning, Farid B. and his family moved to settle on a plot of land in Susiya after a quarrel with neighbors in another village. Yesterday, Saturday night, they arrived at the site, which is opposite the village and on the eastern side of the road. This morning families of settlers apparently on their way to read the Megillah on the 9th of Av, stopped at the small tent and began cursing and yelling, women, men and children and of course the army declared it a closed military area. This morning this incident with the settler families was repeated and the civil administration entered the picture and demanded from Farid that he destroy the tent or that his sons would lose their permit to enter Israel.
After a discussion and apparently an exchange of blows and violence, Farid destroyed his house.
The course of events is not entirely clear between yesterday and today, but in any case, the field worker from B’Tselem, Nasser, was arrested but received blow but was not injured. Everyone was very tense. When we arrived, there were ISM volunteers there, and everyone was waiting for the Civil Administration or the army to arrive and confirm that the permits were still in effect as a result of the demolition. Two soldiers appeared in the middle of the morning but did not enter the area. They stood near the fence and spoke quite comfortably with Farid, and then left.
The presence of ISM personnel in the field is not particularly auspicious – they are usually quite aggressive and this does not benefit the explosive situation on the ground. We understood that the CPT people would come later, and perhaps the Ecumenical group, who are more experienced and relaxed.
We’ll follow the story with the licenses.
ISM – International Solidarity Movement
CPT – Christian Peacemakers Team
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
MuhammadFeb-24-2026South Hebron Hill, Beit Hagai: Paving an internal security road
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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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