After weeks of intense violence, including home invasions and threats from Israeli settlers in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, entire villages in the south Hebron hills in the occupied West Bank have made a collective decision to leave.
According to B’Tselem, in the last three weeks 858 Palestinians from 32 communities, including 13 entire communities, have been forcibly displaced. The numbers increase every day.
After years of legal battles, Israel’s supreme court ruled last May in favour of the IDF that a 3,000-hectare (7,410-acre) area of Masafer Yatta would remain a military training zone, known as Firing Zone 918, a ruling illegal under international law and one of the single biggest expulsion decisions since the occupation began. Since then, the army and Israeli settlers have steadily increased the pressure to try to force the Palestinian community in the Firing Zone to leave.
