While the world watches Gaza burn and global leaders speak in polished soundbites of peace and “mutual restraint,” another slow and brutal erasure unfolds — quieter, but no less devastating.
Twelve ancient villages in the hills of Masafer Yatta, nestled deep in the South Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank, are now under fresh Israeli military eviction orders. Nearly 2,800 Palestinian men, women, and children—shepherds, farmers, students, elders—face imminent displacement from lands they’ve lived on for generations. The hills that hold their memories and graves are being turned into a military training ground.
🏚️ The Names They Want Us to Forget
They are not just numbers. These are the villages of Jinba, al-Majaz, al-Taban, al-Fakhit, Halawa, al-Mufaqarah, al-Mirkez, Khallet ad-Dab’a, Safai, Maghayir al-Abid, Tuba, and Sarura. Some of them, like Sarura, have already been ethnically cleansed and lie empty — waiting like ghosts of what’s to come.
Each village has its own school. Its own mosque. Its own wells and caves. Children walk long distances to attend class. Families gather around bread ovens passed from mother to daughter for generations. Olive groves, goat pens, and ancient terraces—all marked for destruction.
🚧 The Pretext: “Firing Zone 918”
This is not new. Since the 1980s, Israel designated over 30,000 dunums of Masafer Yatta as “Firing Zone 918”—an area supposedly reserved for military training. But it’s not an empty zone. It’s filled with life, resilience, and rooted Palestinian communities.
In May 2022, Israel’s High Court gave the military a green light to expel residents. Now, in June 2025, under new High Planning Council decisions, eviction orders have been issued for all 12 villages. Bulldozers can roll in at any moment.
📚 A War Crime in Slow Motion
Let’s be clear: forcibly transferring protected populations under occupation is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
But in Masafer Yatta, Israel has normalized what international law forbids:
- Schools receive demolition notices.
- Medical clinics are shut down.
- Water tanks are punctured by bullets.
- Children grow up watching their homes flattened.
- Settler violence, roadblocks, and military drills terrorize families daily.
This is not about security. This is about erasing a people from their land.
🧕🏽 Where Will They Go?
The residents have nowhere else to go. They are not refugees from elsewhere. This is their ancestral land. Many families have documents dating back to the Ottoman era, proving ownership. But Israel’s courts and military authorities ignore these. In their eyes, Palestinian presence is a threat. Livelihood is illegal. Existence is resistance.
When a child in al-Mufaqarah draws their home in school, it includes tanks. When a mother in Tuba hangs laundry, she watches for military jeeps. When a shepherd from Jinba grazes sheep, drones buzz overhead. What kind of life is this?
🌍 Where Is the World?
The silence is deafening.
The hypocrisy is grotesque.
Western governments who claim to uphold human rights remain mute. International law is selectively enforced. The same institutions that send aid to Ukraine, sanctions to Sudan, and condemnation to Myanmar — say nothing here.
Where are the journalists? Where are the UN envoys? Where are the "liberal democracies"?
#SaveMasaferYatta should be trending worldwide. But instead, it is buried under bureaucratic language and diplomatic cowardice.
✊🏽 Still, They Remain
Despite the trauma, the demolitions, the arrests — the people of Masafer Yatta refuse to leave. They sleep in tents beside rubble. They rebuild after every destruction. They teach their children the names of the land, the trees, the soil.
One father told a visiting activist:
“We are not staying because of politics. We are staying because our grandparents are buried here. Because this land is part of our soul.”
This is not just about Masafer Yatta. It is a microcosm of the entire Palestinian experience: to exist is to resist. To stay is to defy erasure. To speak is to challenge the narrative.
🧵 Call to Action
- Share their names: #MasaferYatta
- Contact your representatives. Demand they speak out.
- Support grassroots organizations resisting on the ground.
- Don’t let them be evicted in silence.
Masafer Yatta is not a firing zone. It is home.
Let us not be the generation that watched a people vanish from their hills without raising a voice.
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