The Israeli occupation army has announced its intent to seize more than eight dunums of Palestinian land in the Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Information Centre reported.
Local sources reported that today that the occupation army delivered a military order announcing its intent to seize 8,438 square metres of land belonging to local residents of Masafer Yatta near the illegal settlement of Karmiel.
Head of the Masafer Yatta villages council Nidhal Yunis said that the land the Israeli occupation intends to appropriate is located at the main entrance of all the areas, villages and communities in Masafer Yatta and its pastureland.
According to Yunis, the local residents fear that the occupation’s control over this area will tighten the siege on their villages, restrict their movement, and increase their daily suffering.
An image of a map of the Masafer Yatta land
Masafer Yatta is an area in the southern hills of Hebron province, which is home to 12 Palestinian villages totaling about 2,800 residents. The area spreads out over an area estimated at approximately 35,000 dunums (35 square kilometres) of land, where Palestinian agricultural communities have lived for generations.
In violation of international law, which prohibits the expulsion of a population from their land and the use of occupied land for military training, the Israeli occupation army declared the area Firing Zone 918 in the early 1980s in order to dispossess Palestinians from their homes and strengthen illegal Jewish settlements in the area.
Since this declaration, residents have lived under the daily threat of demolitions, evictions and dispossession. Families in Masafer Yatta are denied access to their land, roads, water sources, schools, medical services and hospitals. This is in addition to almost daily violence from settlers in the region.
On May 4, 2022, the Israeli high court issued its final decision in the decades-long case, rejecting the residents’ petition and giving the army the green light to forcibly evict these communities at a moment’s notice.
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