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Rabat – Israel’s Supreme Court has concluded a two-decade legal procedure by allowing the forcible transfer of hundreds of Palestinians from Masafer Yatta to establish a military firing zone.
In the 1980s, the Israeli army declared Masafer Yatta, 3,000 hectares of privately owned Palestinian agricultural land in the South Hebron Hills, as “Firing Zone 918.”
On Wednesday, the court dismissed all petitions condemning the expulsion of hundreds of Palestinians from their properties and land.
According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Israeli authorities issued evacuation orders for Masafer Yatta inhabitants in the early 2000s, meaning that the latest court ruling just officialized and accelerated the expulsion procedure.
“The occupation court just decided: My community will be destroyed. I live in Masafer Yatta, Palestine. An unjust 23 year long trial ended today with a verdict of mass eviction. The army can now place us on trucks, 2,400 people, and expel us from our ancient villages, one by one,” Palestinian journalist Basel Adra tweeted on Wednesday.
The court said that the Palestinian people inhabiting the area had a nomadic way of life, meaning that they had not been permanent residents. Israel’s military justified the need for a firing range in the area for security reasons, adding that Palestinians had built in the area without a legal permit.
The court’s ruling sparked Palestinian and international uproar with some Israeli rights groups refuting the decision.
Nidal Abu Younis, Masafer Yatta’s Mayor, told Reuters that the latest ruling “proves that this court is part of the occupation…We are not going to leave our homes. We will stay here.”
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Caroline Ort, who serves as the Norwegian Refugee Council’s country director for Palestine, noted that the “court ruling effectively opens the door for the Israeli military to uproot entire Palestinian communities that have lived in Masafer Yatta for decades.”
Ort further underlined that the decision would cause “irredeemable” damage to the livelihood of Masafer Yatta’s inhabitants. In this sense, she called for the reversal of such a “dangerous step” that violates international law to stop “Israel as an occupying power from transferring members of the occupied population from their existing communities against their will.”
The Europe Union Delegation to the Palestinians also highlighted the prohibition of “individual or mass forcible transfers and deportation from occupied territories” under international law. “Israel has the obligation to protect the Palestinian population & not displace it,” it added.
Since 2011, Israeli authorities have demolished or confiscated more than 200 Palestinian properties in “Firing Zone 918”, leading to the displacement of 608 Palestinians, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Currently, roughly 30% of zones of “Area C” in the occupied West Bank are designated as “firing zones.”
The tragic news regarding Masafer Yatta follows a pattern of systematic attacks on Palestinians that aim to steal their lands, identity, and history.
