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South and West Hebron Hills
The Hebron sub-district is home to 759,000 Palestinians and 17,562 settlers, and covers an area of 969,000 dunams. The settlers live in Kiryat Arba, in the Jewish settlements of Old Hebron and in about twenty settlements and outposts united in the Mount Hebron Regional Council. The countryside around Yatta is known as Masafar Yata (Yatta’s daughter villages). The inhabitants of the villages subsist on sheep and agriculture. Agriculture is possible only in small plots, especially near stream channels. Most of the area is rocky and craggy.
The settlers are abusing Palestinians and taking over their living space
Control Areas in the South Hebron Hills
The Oslo Accords divided the West Bank into A, B, and C Areas. Except for a few communities recognized as Area A (controlled by the Palestinian Authority, mostly along road 60), the entire space is included in Area C under complete Israeli control (administrative and security control by Israel, with welfare, health and education provided by the PA). The Lands have been declared state land, and access roads are all within Area C.
What are we doing in the Hebron Hills?
Members of the southern group of MachsomWatch monitor and report on the goings on in Palestinian communities in the South and West Hebron Hills since 2004, and since then we tell the occupation narrative. Our reports provide ongoing documentation for years now of daily occurrences in the occupied area, most of which do not even approach the mass-media. Our monitoring and visits help create personal ties with the Palestinians and enable cooperation and an understanding on the part of Palestinians, that not all Israelis are settler-colonists, there are other Israelis as well. We have sometimes helped solve problems that are the consequence of a long, ongoing military occupation.
We began reporting checkpoints and blocked villages along road 60, between Beer Sheva (southern Israeli city) and Hebron, expanded to the city of Hebron itself, and later also began reporting the goings-on in this entire area, from Hursa in the west, Yatir in the south, Hashen Al Daraj in the east, and Shuyukh in the north. The area we cover is the South and West Hebron Hills and includes Palestinian communities as well as Israeli settlements and outposts. Over the years, our reports are also read by the ‘occupation authorities’ (responsible for everything in the checkpoints, army, Civil Administration) and have helped somewhat to improve conditions. We keep deliberating how to achieve the purposes of reporting without helping the occupation to become ‘easier’.
This is happening in Fire Area 918 in the South Hebron Hills
On the eve of Remembrance Day (the day before Israel Independence Day), the Israeli High Court decided on the transfer and expulsion of residents from 8 Palestinian communities in the area of Masafar Yata in the South Hebron Hills. Residents of the villages have been living under the threat of demolition, evacuation and expropriation since the IDF issued evacuation orders in 1999 based on the 1980’s proclamation of their area of residence as a firing zone for IDF drills. None of the nearby settlements were included in this zone.The Masafer Yata Palestiniian villages retain a special lifestyle and ancient agricultural culture. They also posses a clear historical documentation that testifies to a Palestinian settlement in this area, generations before the establishment of Israel – long ago in the caves and in later times outside them.
Evacuating residents from the area means destroying these historic villages and leaving entire families (about 2,000 people, children, adults and the elderly) homeless. This is contrary to international law.
In June 2022, a firing drill has started, and life has become harder.
map of firing zone 918
Photo: Ocha
Chronicle of an impossible existence
Harassment is authorized and permitted
Since the Oslo Accords, the policy of Israel’s government is an unceasing attempt to dispossess Palestinians living in Area C of their land, and impact their natural rights. The Civil Administration
does not approve constructions plans, and thus the Palestinian population is denied its basic right to conduct its life in accordance with natural growth, to build dwellings and even vital public services such as clinics and schools.
The activity of the army and Civil Administration includes blocking access roads, repeated expulsions of Palestinians from their homes – demolishing houses, tents, shacks, outhouses, outdoor ovens, sheep pens and troughs, blocking water holes, preventing work in the fields, preventing grazing and uprooting trees. All this is done in order to exhaust the Palestinians, drive them to despair and move to the city where they will be unemployed and devoid of any means of survival.
Mourns the uprooting of olive trees
Photo: Mira Balaban
2019 Outrooting trees in Umm El Khir
Photo: Hagit Back
הריסות בארכיז, 2020
Photo: מיכל צדיק
Our Reports Tell Stories
The wondrous story of A-Tawani’s development
We began to visit and report on the cave village of Khirbat Tawani in 2004. Back then it was mostly caves and houses over caves, struggling to survive under the restraints of occupation and the threats of the Havat Maon settlers, who built their outpost right above this village. There was a small schoolhouse in the village, operated under harsh conditions, and there were no access roads nor electricity or a regular water supply. The inhabitants survived mostly on grazing sheep and goats, growing olive trees and working outside the village.
Road 317 was a road ‘not for Palestinians’, and the dirt track to the district urban center of Yatta was often blocked arbitrarily, by army decisions. Thanks to inner organization and a persistent holding-on to the ground, the villagers survive with their non-violent resistance to the occupation, against countless cases of harassment by the settlers and the Civil Administration. Thus they constitute a road sign to the surrounding Palestinian villages.
In spite of the army’s and the Civil Administration’s prohibition to clear the boulders that filled the yard, at last the school yard was developed in one week – the villagers blew up the boulders and used them to pave a road to the school.
The villagers paved an inner circular road, an act that was not permitted by the army and the Civil Administration for a long time. This road was developed to connect the village to road 317 that connects all the communities in the area.
Now the village has a clinic, an electricity grid has been installed and in past years even a kindergarten was opened.
The medical clinic of A-Tawani
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Holding-on to the land in Susya
The Jewish settlementy of Susya began in 1979. Ever since then, a persistent struggle has been waged to remove the few Palestinian inhabitants who refuse to leave their birthplace and move to nearby Yatta.
Denial of water and electric power: in Palestinian Susya, as in most villages of the South Hebron Hills, there is no running water. The villagers purchase expensive water delivered in tankers. The reality is that the water pipe providing water for the Susya settlement runs through Palestinian land.
In Palestinian Susya there is no grid electricity as is provided the Jewish settlers. The Palestinians use a solar energy system, installed with donations.
The demolitions in the villages do not spare water holes nor solar panels. Furthermore, the electricity poles meant to transfer solar energy among the villages are dismantled with excuses of safety hazards (instead of reinforcing them if problems arise…).
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The fiasco of the concrete wall to protect the road
In 2007-2009 the security authorities attempted to build a concrete wall along the apartheid roads of the South Hebron Hills (road 60, road 317). The declared purpose of this was “security needs”. A concrete wall was built along road 317, making Palestinian shepherds’ lives impossible since it blocked the passage of sheep and goats from one side of the road to the other. With the help of the southern group of MachsomWatch, the Palestinians’ appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court obtained support of the Israeli Council for Peace and Security, and the Supreme Court ruled to remove the concrete wall. The question is: who paid the enormous expenses of this fiasco? Perhaps the answer is obvious…
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Schoolhouse “Demolition games” – the Palestinian challenge:
In the villages of Zanouta, Susya and Simia (all in Area C), the PA has approved the founding of schools, whereas the Civil Administration has not approved their construction. These schools keep receiving demolition orders, are demolished by the Israeli army and rebuilt by the Palestinians. Throughout the West Bank there are 13 such schools!
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“If you don’t let us live on the ground, we shall live underneath it!”
Near Massafer Yatta, on the eastern side of road 317, there are small hamlets some of whose villagers used to live in caves and were expelled in the past by the Israeli military authorities. When the illegal outpost settlers began to take over grazing grounds in the area, the original inhabitants began to return to their villages. In the past years, harassment by the army and violence at the hand of settlers have exacerbated greatly. The incident of the generator at A-Rakeez (where a young man was shot in the neck and is hospitalized, paralyzed for life from the neck down) is merely one example. Basel says: ‘You must understand, this is the law and justice of occupation’.
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Neighbors from Hell
South Hebron Hills villagers suffer frequent harassment by the Jewish settler-colonists, alongside the attempts to expel them, and home demolitions conducted by the army. The army and police usually refrain from intervening in violent incidents and do not carry out the investigations required to enforce the law. Harassments in this region include assaults and the attempts to burn down dwelling tents, using dogs to attack people and livestock, attacking flocks, uprooting olive trees, harassing children on their way to school, and preventing access to grazing grounds.
- Violence in A-Tawani: In 2005 Havat Maon was created (an illegal outpost adjacent to the settlement of Maon), and these weird characters began to harass the Tawani villagers. Havat Maon is located on the hill right above Tawani, inside a wood, and it is very easy for its inhabitants to come down, do harm and disappear. The early damages focused on polluting water holes. At the end of winter 2005, towards the dry season, they threw a carcass of a chicken into Elder Saber’s water hold. Naturally the water hole was out of use until the next winter. Later, through inner organization and determination, the villagers began to resist the Havat Maon harassments, that also included frequent uprooting of trees and poisoning sheep (inspectors of the Nature Preservation Society arrive only if a protected animal such as a gazelle has been poisoned. The poisoning of sheep and goats does not interest anyone).
- in 2004-2005, with the help of a MachsomWatch initiative, the Israeli Knesset’s (parliament) education committee reviewed the problem of the harassment by Havat Maon settlers of the children of Palestinian village Umm Touba children on their way to school in Tawani. A directive was issued to provide the children military escort. Since then, every morning and noon, the Umm Touba children get Israeli army escorts. Naturally there is no escort for the summer season. In the Covid-19 years, the absence of crucial presence of international volunteers has been sorely felt, and abused..
Escort to Umm Touba children on their way to school, 19.10.2019
Photo: Michal Tsadik
- Hurling a firebomb into a home in Dirat village, opposite Zif, beyond road 356: In January 2015, settlers furled a firebomb at night into a room in a Dirat village home, and covered the house with hate graffiti. The entire room was burnt. Luckily the dwellers slept in the next room, and were “only” hurt by the smoke.
The dwellers of a burnt room in a house in Dirat village, 1.1.2015
Photo: Judy Orbach
Futuristic dystopia? Sheep farms, drones and lords in Jerusalem
A new variant of settlement has arrived in the southern Hebron Hills: Establishment of a sheep farm: Erect two buildings on a hill; Pave a road, bring sheep, cattle and horses. Every morning hoist a drone, locating herds of Palestinians grazing in the field. Bring the herds of the farm backed by horses and dogs and expel the herds of the Palestinians. This is how grazing and agriculture lands are taken over. The "Amana" settlement movement boasted in 2021 that this was a particularly economical method, so that they had already "conquered" 1,000 dunams.
Evil winds are blowing In the south Hebron hills in 2021. The settlers' attempts to violently control water cisterns and other areas on the outskirts of the Palestinian villages are intensifying. There is an increase in the numbers of attackers, violence and the frequency of attacks. They are aided by the political lords (Gvirim in Hebrew) in Jerusalem. The Palestinian residents are on guard day and night - also because of the of the acts of the Israeli security forces - from arrests under various pretexts (the release after a few hours proves that the reasons were unjustified) to the siege of the village or firing at the village from a distance for no reason.
Is this the future of the region?