The ongoing nakba
JVL Introduction
Peter Beinart’s first tweet of the new year is a timely reminder of the ongoing demolitions and expulsions at Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron hills.
He draws unshakeable parallels between the historical experience of Jewish dispossession and the nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, a process that is still ongoing.
“Given our history,” Beinart asks, “how can Jews deny another people the right to return to their homeland?”
Below we give some more information on and links to the campaign to save Masafer Yatta, but first 5 short extracts from Beinart’s powerful 2021 essay in Jewish Currents, Teshuvah: A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return, to reflect on.
Masafer Yatta is an area in the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank, which is home to twelve Palestinian villages totaling about 2,800 residents. The area is spread out over about 35,000 dunam of land, where agricultural communities have lived for generations.
In opposition to international law, which prohibits the expulsion of a population from its land and the use of occupied land for military training, the Israeli army declared the area Firing Zone 918, in the early 1980s, in order to dispossess Palestinians from their homes and strengthen Israeli 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, sources of water, schools, medical services, and hospitals. This is in addition to nearly daily violence from settlers in the region.
On May 4th, 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. If the Israeli army moves ahead with the eviction it will be one of the largest expulsions carried out by the State of Israel in recent decades, an alarming precedent that could lead to further expulsions across the West Bank, and a further escalation of Israel’s policies of annexation and Apartheid.
We must not stand by as Israel evicts and expels entire communities. We cannot allow Apartheid to go unchallenged.
Fact sheet: Masafer Yatta communities at risk of forcible transfer | June 2022
prepared by OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
B’Tselem keeps a webpage on the situation, continually updated.
Here is the latest post:
Today (Monday, 2 Jan. 2023), the Israeli District Coordination and Liaison Office (DCO) notified the Palestinian DCO that in the coming days, about 1,000 Palestinians from Masafer Yatta whose land was designated “Firing Zone 918” will receive notices to evict their homes. The Israeli DCO added that the state plans to offer the residents an alternative location, to which they will be expelled.
B’Tselem responded: “Forcible transfer of protected persons in occupied territory is a war crime. Therefore, the Israeli ‘offer’ of an alternative is meaningless. It is a violent threat that leaves the residents with no choice.”
Israel’s notice that it intends to carry out the expulsion follows years in which the state took various measures to make the residents’ lives intolerable, driving them to leave their homes ostensibly of their own free will. Among other things, Israel prohibited these communities from hooking up to power and water grids or constructing homes and public buildings, restricted their movement and enabled soldiers and settlers to threaten their lives and property on a daily basis.
In May 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the state has the power to designate Masafer Yatta a “firing zone” and that the members of these communities are not permanent residents, paving the way for their expulsion. It now appears that even the state admits they live in the area and is seeking a site to relocate them.
In October 2022, B’Tselem wrote to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, requesting his urgent intervention to clarify that Israel must stop its efforts to expel Palestinian communities in the South Hebron hills from their homes and land.
Some families in Massafer Yatta have decided that they can no longer resist the repeated demolition of their homes. However, they remain determined to remain on or close to the land which they own, and which defines them. The solution they are choosing is to revert to a former way of living – moving into nearby caves, and leaving behind their tents and houses.
Cave dwelling used to be widespread in the area, and can be a feasible option, provided there are the considerable funds needed to make the caves suitable for modern habitation. If you want to help these Massafer Yatta families hold onto their land and identity, please contact me at the British Shalom-Salaam Trust at bsst@bsst.org.uk to find out how to donate.
Are Jews to be condemned for this Apartheid for the rest of history or are they trusting they will be tolerated for these crimes as others have been, is there a concept of rehabilitation in years to come? Surely this long term plan is worse than previous national crimes done out of ignorance and hate, this is done in cold blood. How bad can it get.
Jews no more that other groups of people are immune to the terrible damage a racist ideology can do to one’s empathy for others outside the tribe. A similar effect can be seen in the current campaign against the so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ landing daily on English shores. The British government mendaciously pretends that the real target of their project of forced expulsions to Rwanda is the people smugglers, but to anyone paying attention it is just another installment of the hatred for foreigners – particularly brown-skinned ones – that Brexit has brought out into the open. The difference is that the animosity felt towards Palestinians in Israel is intensified by buried feelings of guilt and shame, as well as the fear that the Palestinians, if allowed to live and prosper like any normal group, may ultimately outnumber them. It is already an explosive situation, and I dread the next development, particularly in view of the composition of the new Israeli government.