At the Meitar checkpoint, 12 cars were counted on the Palestinian side – very few authorized workers crossed into Israel.

Highway 317 – New piles of dirt were piled up to block vehicles from the villages from reaching the dirt roads to the road.

Maon settlement – workers are expanding the vineyard north of the road. A new water tower has been built and painted at the intersection.

All the men are sitting in the only public building in the village, which serves as the mukhtar’s office and the kindergarten. They are sitting and waiting. They have been sitting like this for a year and a quarter, there is no work and only the fear of the settler farms around creates vigilance. If the rioters arrive, they have no way to defend themselves except to try to call the police. Any attempt by them to use force against the invaders will result in their arrest, the settlers will come out unharmed, as if they were attacked.

This time they know what they are waiting for: the settlers take over territory through planting. A few days ago, settlers arrived with maps marked with the “blue line” meaning the border between the village area and the state lands that can supposedly be taken over. The settlers marked with a white thread that line on the map, which crosses the farthest house in the village – between it and Salah’s barn, and goes down to the road to the east. Immediately after marking, they dug pits and filled them with garbage, brought a bench and announced that on Friday, February 14, a ceremony to plant olive trees would be held with a large crowd.

36 pits which have already been dug are very close to the village fence and create a living border on two sides of the village. Across the dirt road that goes down to the east, the Palestinian Authority built a water pond that serves the villages in the area and the large school in the area. The settlers climbed onto the pond and placed an Israeli flag visible from afar – a symbol of the occupation. Villager Eid, an excellent Hebrew speaker who has exhibited in Israel and abroad, expresses everyone’s pain. They are desperate and angry, and above all helpless in the face of the settlers’ violence and their abandonment by the Israeli law enforcement authorities – the police and the army.

He still has compassion for the “slave” boys, in his language: a phenomenon that is not new but is increasing in intensity: The phenomenon of slaves, 13–14-year-old boys from the institutionalized settlements who have behavioural problems and have not been integrated into educational institutions, are handed over by their parents for “re-education” in special institutions in Susiya and other settlements.

 In fact, they are scattered among the cattle farms that were established in Masafer Yatta to take over Palestinian lands, and there they are employed in the hard work that the farm owners (Kaplan, Yinon, and their ilk) do not do. They are sent to graze the herds even in weather that is not at all suitable for sheep.  They are recruited to riot in Palestinian villages because they are teenagers under the age of criminal liability. They are very violent, purposeful (brainwashed in Eid’s language) and instigators of quarrels. The villagers are very keen to spread this information because most of the harassment is done by these young people. The hopelessness of the people of Masafer Yatta also gripped us, and it was felt throughout the entire journey.