Rights Groups Slam Israeli Ruling That Allows Razing of Palestinian Residents from Villages

A human rights group named B’Tselem called on the international community on Thursday to prevent the transfer from happening, in what would be one of the largest single displacements of Palestinians in decades.

The call came a day after Israel’s high court rejected a petition against the forcible displacement of more than 1,000 Palestinians who reside in the area.

Last night, the Israeli Supreme Court decided to displace thousands of Palestinians from their lands in Masafer Yatta, and to seize more than 30,000 dunams for the occupation army's training in "shooting" areas and destroying 12 villages.

The same court also ordered the payment of 20,000 shekels to each of the petitioners against the order of the military occupation army issued in 1981 to close these areas and declare them a "firing zone."

“The justices have thus proved once again that the occupied cannot expect justice from the occupier’s court,” the group said in a statement, Al Jazeera reported.

“The decision, weaving baseless legal interpretation with decontextualised facts, makes it clear that there is no crime which the high court justices will not find a way to legitimize.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has described the development as “dangerous”.

“The damage this decision will inflict on people’s homes and source of livelihoods is irredeemable. People could be made homeless overnight with nowhere for them to go,” Caroline Ort, NRC’s country director for Palestine, said in a statement on Thursday.

“This is a dangerous step that must be reversed. If followed through, it would constitute a violation of international law which prohibits Israel as an occupying power from transferring members of the occupied population from their existing communities against their will,” Ort added.

Masafer Yatta spans some 36km (22 miles) and is comprised of 19 Palestinian villages that are home to more than 2,000 people.

The Israeli military designated part of the area a closed military zone for training in the 1980s, and “they have sought to remove the communities on this basis”, according to the United Nations.

The court said in its ruling that the Palestinian residents had not been permanent residents of the area when the Israeli military first declared it a firing zone.

Masafer Yatta’s Mayor Nidal Younes was quoted by Palestinian news agency Wafa as saying that the court ignored all evidence provided by the families in the area that shows they resided there prior to the 1980s.

At times, residents of Masafer Yatta were forced to temporarily evacuate their homes during military training for days at a time. Under international law, it is prohibited to use an occupied territory for a purpose that serves only the occupier and not the occupied population.

International law also prohibits the forcible transfer of an occupied population altogether.

Israeli authorities have threatened the communities with home demolition orders under the pretext that they lack the correct building permits, which Palestinians say are impossible to obtain.

Officials from the Civil Administration, the Israeli military’s division that administers the West Bank, accompanied by Israeli soldiers and Border Police equipped with bulldozers, have foiled construction attempts or efforts to connect to the infrastructure by the Bedouin communities.

Israeli authorities have also expropriated thousands of dunams (1 dunam is equal to 1,000 square metres or about 0.25 acres) of land from residents to illegally establish settlements and outposts, including Ma’on and Havat Ma’on – whose residents have carried out attacks against the Palestinian communities.

Earlier this year, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT).