Palestinians prepare to lose West Bank homes as Israel pushes for expulsion

Israeli soldiers bound Mohamed Yousef’s hands down his backmost arsenic they dragged him to a subject campy adjacent the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta, a postulation of Palestinian villages successful Hebron governorate, successful precocious June.

With him were his mother, his woman and 2 sisters, arrested connected their onshore for confronting equipped Israeli settlers.

Settlers often graze their animals connected Palestinian onshore to asseverate control, awesome unrestricted entree and laic the groundwork for establishing illegal outposts, cutting Palestinians disconnected from their farms and livestock.

Yousef knew this, truthful helium went retired to support his workplace erstwhile helium saw the equipped settlers.

But arsenic is often the case, it was Mohamed, a Palestinian, who was punished. At the subject camp, helium was near with his household successful the scorching prima for hours.

While Mohamed and his household were released the adjacent day, they fearfulness they volition not person the means to support themselves for overmuch longer.

“The police, the [Israeli] service and settlers often onslaught america each astatine once. What are we expected to do?” Yousef said.

The Israeli subject did not respond to Al Jazeera’s petition for remark connected the incident.

Useful pretext

Things mightiness beryllium astir to get worse for Yousef and his family, who, on with astir 1,200 different Palestinians, could soon beryllium expelled from their lands.

On June 17, during the zenith of Israel’s warfare connected Iran, the Israeli authorities submitted a letter, a transcript of which has been seen by Al Jazeera, to the Israeli High Court of Justice that included a petition by the service to demolish astatine slightest 12 villages successful Masafer Yatta and expel the inhabitants.

The Israeli service argued that it has to demolish the villages to person the country into a subject “firing” oregon grooming zone, according to Palestinian and Israeli quality rights groups.

However, a 2015 study by Kerem Novat, an Israeli civilian nine organisation, recovered that specified justifications are a ruse to prehend Palestinian land. From the clip Israel occupied swaths of the West Bank successful the 1967 war, it has converted astir one-third of the West Bank into a “closed subject zone”, according to the study.

And yet, subject drills person ne'er been carried retired successful 80 percent of these zones aft Palestinians were dispossessed of their homes.

Palestinians transportation their belongings arsenic they are forced to permission their homes aft Israel issues demolition orders for 104 buildings successful Tulkarem, occupied West Bank connected July 3, 2025 [Faruk Hanedar/Anadolu]

The survey concluded that the subject confiscates Palestinian onshore arsenic a strategy to “reduce the Palestinian population’s quality to usage the onshore and to transportation arsenic overmuch of it arsenic imaginable to Israeli settlers”.

Yousef fears his colony could endure a akin destiny pursuing the state’s petition to the High Court.

“I person nary thought what’s going to hap to us,” Mohamed told Al Jazeera. “Even if we are forced to leave, past wherever are we expected to go? Where volition we live?”

Rigged system

Many fearfulness the Israeli High Court volition broadside with the service and evict each Palestinians from “Firing Zone 918”, a conflict that has been ongoing for decades.

Israeli courts person played a cardinal relation successful rubber-stamping Israel’s policies successful the occupied West Bank, described arsenic apartheid by many, by approving the demolition of full Palestinian communities, according to Amnesty International.

The communities presently astatine hazard were archetypal handed an eviction announcement and expelled successful 1999, and told that their villages had been declared a subject grooming zone, which the service dubbed “Firing Zone 918”.

The service claimed that the herding communities surviving successful this “zone” were not “permanent residents”, contempt the communities saying they lived there agelong earlier the authorities of Israel was formed by ethnically cleansing Palestinians successful 1948, an lawsuit known arsenic the Nakba.

With small recourse different than navigating an unfriendly Israeli ineligible strategy to defy their dispossession, the communities and quality rights lawyers representing them initiated a ineligible conflict to halt the evictions successful Israeli territory courts and the High Court.

In 2000, a justice ordered the service to let the communities to instrumentality to their villages until a last ruling was issued.

Human rights lawyers person since filed countless petitions and appeals to hold and hinder the army’s effort to expel the villagers.

“The [Israelis]…have been trying to expel america for decades,” said 63-year-old Nidal Younis, the caput of the Masafer Yatta Council.

Then, successful May 2022, the High Court ordered the expulsion of 8 Masafer Yatta villages. The tribunal ruled that the inhabitants were not “permanent residents”, ignoring grounds that the defence provided.

“We brought [the court] artefacts, photograph analyses and past tools, utilized by the families for decades, that were typical of imperishable residence,” said Netta Amar-Shiff, 1 of the lawyers representing the villagers.

“But the tribunal dismissed each the grounds we brought arsenic irrelevant.”

Expediting demolitions

Amar-Shiff and her colleagues filed different lawsuit successful aboriginal 2023 to reason that subject drills must, astatine the precise least, not effect successful the demolition of Palestinian villages oregon the expulsion of inhabitants successful the area.

The ineligible battle, and others, is present being upended by the Israeli service and government’s petition to evict and demolish each the villages successful the desired subject zone, said Amar-Shiff.

In an effort to fast-track that request, the Civil Planning Bureau, an Israeli subject assemblage liable for gathering permits, issued a decree connected June 18 to cull each pending Palestinian gathering requests successful “Firing Zone 918”. The United Nations and Israeli quality rights groups person been notified of the caller decree, though it has not been published connected immoderate authorities website.

Across Israel and the occupied West Bank, Palestinians and Israelis request to get gathering permits from Israeli authorities to physique and unrecorded successful immoderate structure.

An Israeli policeman stands by arsenic a bulldozer demolishes the location of Fakhri Abu Diab, successful Silwan, occupied East Jerusalem, February 14, 2024 [Ammar Awad/Reuters]

According to the Israeli quality rights radical Bimkom, Palestinians successful Area C, the largest of three zones successful the occupied West Bank that were created retired of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, are practically ever denied permits, portion permits for Israeli settlers are astir ever approved.

Palestinians successful Masafer Yatta inactive submitted galore gathering requests, hoping the administrative process would hold the demolition of their homes.

However, the Central Planning Bureau’s caller decree, issued to align with the army’s anterior announcement, supersedes each these pending requests and paves the mode for an outright rejection of each of them, facilitating much taste cleansing, according to activists, lawyers and quality rights groups.

Once the decree is published, lawyers representing Palestinians from “Firing Zone 918” volition person to spell to the High Court for a last and definitive ruling, which is expected wrong a fewer months.

“There are galore judges successful the High Court who volition either disregard this lawsuit connected its look oregon not bid the service to halt demolitions until they rule,” Amar-Shiff told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, settlers and Israeli troops are escalating attacks against Palestinians surviving successful the area.

Sami Hourani, a researcher from Masafer Yatta for Al-Haq, a Palestinian quality rights organisation, said the Israeli service has confiscated dozens of cars since declaring its intent to ethnically cleanse the villages.

He added that the service is arresting solidarity activists trying to sojourn the area, arsenic good arsenic helping settlers to onslaught and expel Palestinians.

“We are successful an isolation signifier now,” Hourani told Al Jazeera, adding that the villages successful Masafer Yatta are nether siege and chopped disconnected from the extracurricular world.

“We are expecting the service to transportation retired monolithic demolitions astatine immoderate moment.”