Susiya is surrounded by violent settlers' farms
“Water, bring us water”, asked the people of Zanuta who are trying to return, build and restore their destroyed village. The court allowed them to return to their lands but not to rebuild their homes. “Enlightened occupation” is another oxymoron from the creator of the State of Israel.
We bought water and coffee and tea and sugar and biscuits to be there for the people who are there day and night, trying to reorganize for the rehabilitation of the village. Faiz a-Til, the head of the council, and other people are there all the time. You can’t really live there because everything is destroyed, so only the men who sleep among the ruins are there.
As soon as we arrived, we saw and heard Shir’el, the settler, like a pesky fly driving with an ATV around and around. He takes pictures of us and I took pictures of him taking pictures. I also exchanged words, of course they are useless though I didn’t hold back. He gestures to Meiterim, the nearby settlement, but when I ask where he is from, he replies that he from Zanuta.
The people are on the verge of despair.
I was very happy to meet the tireless attorney, Kamar Mishraki. I introduced myself and we talked for a bit. She continues to strengthen them and support them and convinces them not to give up. This ruling of the court does not allow a real return but does not deny their right to their lands, catch 22 of the occupation.
Everything is destroyed. We, who remember what the small and well-kept school that they established as part of the Tahadi – challenge throughout the West Bank so that children do not have to walk kilometres and cross dangerous roads, looked like, see the ruins. Even then and today, only one such Jewish phrase came to mind: “Be careful among poor people from whom the Torah will come.” And also: “When they torture him, so will he multiply and so will he break out.”
In addition to the settler, Shir’el, who is constantly there according to the people, another arrives in the van, his earlocks folded behind his ears. He also takes pictures of us taking pictures of him.
“Why don’t you respect the court’s decision?” I ask. “What’s the decision?” He asks and to my answer he replies: “Ma’am, read the verdict again, it says different things than what you say.” He also drives back and forth along the fence and takes pictures of everyone who approaches the compound that was once a village.
People tell about an incident from yesterday when the same Shir’el took a sheep belonging to one of them and claimed it was his and it was stolen. The police of course arrested the man who claimed it was his, and he was released only after he paid 1000 NIS. And the sheep? Of course, it stayed with the settler.
The settlers are constantly monitoring the people who are trying to exercise their legal right to return to what used to be their homes and harassing them all the time. We waited for Shir’el to leave so that we could unload the water and everything else in a safe place. The people are afraid that he will come and take or destroy everything.
Then we went to Susiya to give Fatma some medicine that we had obtained at her request. Thanks to Orna Naor and Ariela Slonim, who received from different doctors a little of what people lack there.
Fatma got stuck beyond the checkpoint. Everything is closed today because of the demolitions in one of the villages in the area. So, we gave them to Nasser’s wife. We also brought to the village, Susiya a lot of clothing, children’s shoes and games that good people who follow what’s going on and really care, collected for us.
Azzam and Wadha are as friendly as ever, and her olives are the tastiest in the world. I bought a lot from her.
Azzam points to the surrounding hills, and shows me how they are surrounded: there “Shepherds Farms” with the settler Amisav Peled, there “Twins Farms”, there “Babylon and Malka Farms”, and in the ancient Susiya lived for a long time Shem-Tov Luski and his sons. They are encircled. There are already 4 new settlements around them.
Azzam also says that this morning there was a typical incident: the settler, Luski, arrived with the van at the pick-up point for the children going to the A-Tuwani school and simply used the siren on his car to make a noise and shout just to scare them. It is like this day and night: the settlers walk around them at every opportunity to harass and threaten: “You won’t be here soon, get out of here.”
At five in the morning he received a message from his neighbour H. who lives close to their Susiya’s school, that once again the settlers Amisav Peled and Yom Tov Luski were walking around the house and making a noise for no reason.
Be careful, his neighbour wrote to him, ‘They walk around us and then went down to the Wadi to the new settlement “Babylon Malka”.
This is their life.
We are told in the media that there is a warming in the occupied areas.
It’s interesting who warms up, who will also get closer later.
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.May-13-2025Susiya - at Ahmad and Halima Nawaja'a
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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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Zanuta
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Zanuta was a small rural Palestinian locality until its demolition. It was situated in the space around the town Dahariya in the South Hebron Hills, about a ten-minute ride from Meitar Checkpoint. There are documented remains of a large Byzantine settlement in the area. Since the Ottoman (Turkish Empire) period (1516-1917) Zanuta was documented as a locality of shepherds and farmers who live in the remains of the ancient structures and the residential caves near them.
Two individual ranches of colonists were created next to Zanuta: Meitarim (of the colonist Yinon Levi) to the east, and Yehudah (of the colonist Elyashiv Nachum) to the north. Endless attacks, harassments and attempt to chase away the Zanuta villagers have originated in these two outposts.
Until the expulsion, four families lived in the village: A-Samama, Al-Tel, Al Batat, and Al-Qaisia. Farming constituted their main economic activity and employed most of the villagers. The total area of the village is about 12,000 dunams, of which about 3,000 are tended, mostly with field crops.
This village has never had a master plan that would legitimize construction permits. The Civil Administration claimed it was too small and the distance to the next town, Dahariya, too great. For this reason, the Israeli authorities pressured the villagers to leave. The colonists did the job for them.
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