Masafer Yatta
Based on Wikipedia: Masafer Yatta
The Villages That Refuse to Vanish
In the rocky hills south of Hebron, nineteen small Palestinian villages cling to existence in what the Israeli military has designated a "firing zone." The residents—mostly shepherds raising goats and sheep through scorching summers and freezing winters—have lived here for generations. The Israeli government says they must leave. They have refused.
This is Masafer Yatta.
The name itself tells a story of hardship. Some say it derives from the Arabic word for "traveling," a reference to the long journey required to reach these remote hamlets from the nearby town of Yatta. Others offer a bleaker etymology: the word for "nothing," reflecting the local belief that nothing could possibly survive in this harsh landscape.
Yet people have survived here. And in 2025, their story won an Academy Award.
A Geography of Control
To understand what's happening in Masafer Yatta, you need to understand a peculiar system created by the Oslo Accords in the 1990s. The West Bank—the Palestinian territory captured by Israel in 1967—was divided into three administrative zones. Area A is under full Palestinian control. Area B has shared control. And Area C, comprising about sixty percent of the West Bank, falls under complete Israeli military and civil authority.
Masafer Yatta sits entirely within Area C.
This designation has profound consequences. Palestinians in Area C cannot build a home, dig a well, or install a solar panel without Israeli permits. These permits are almost never granted. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements in the same area have flourished, their red-roofed homes spreading across the hilltops with full government support and infrastructure.
The contrast is stark and deliberate.
Firing Zone 918
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Israeli military designated large swaths of the South Hebron Hills as military training areas. Masafer Yatta fell within what became known as Firing Zone 918.
The stated purpose was military training. But a 1981 cabinet minute revealed a different motivation. Ariel Sharon, who would later become Israel's prime minister, explicitly stated that the purpose of such redesignations was to enable the expulsion of local Palestinian residents.
This wasn't about artillery practice. It was about demographics.
For decades, the residents lived in legal limbo. The military periodically threatened expulsion. The villagers periodically challenged those threats in court. Life continued in this precarious equilibrium—until it didn't.
The Evidence of Existence
The Israeli government's legal argument rests on a seemingly simple claim: these Palestinians weren't here before the occupation began in 1967. If they only arrived afterward, the reasoning goes, they have no historical claim to remain.
To support this position, authorities produced aerial photographs from before the 1990s showing minimal signs of habitation. A former senior Defense Ministry advisor summarized the argument bluntly: "They never lived there. You don't see, for example, consistent agricultural cultivation or orchards. There are no permanent houses that are clear and visible to the eye."
But the villagers have their own evidence.
In November 1966, Israeli forces attacked the nearby village of Samu in a massive raid—one of the largest military operations since the 1956 Suez Crisis. United Nations observers documented the aftermath: fifteen houses blown up by Israeli explosives in the village of Jinba, one of the Masafer Yatta hamlets.
The Jordanian government, which then controlled the West Bank, paid compensation to affected residents in April and May 1967. The records are precise: 350 dinars for each stone house destroyed, 100 dinars for every killed camel, seven dinars for each sheep.
These were not nomadic Bedouin tents, as some have claimed. An Israeli geographer named Natan Shalem documented several villages in the area as permanent settlements in his 1931 book about the Judean Desert—decades before the state of Israel even existed.
The Demolitions
In May 2022, Israel's Supreme Court ended the decades-long legal battle. The court endorsed the military's position, paving the way for the expulsion of approximately one thousand residents from twelve villages across 3,000 hectares—about 7,400 acres—of land.
If carried out completely, this would constitute the largest forced displacement of Palestinians since the 1970s.
One detail drew particular attention: David Mintz, one of the judges who ruled on the case, lives in Dolev—an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Critics noted the apparent conflict of interest in having a settler decide the fate of Palestinians facing expulsion to make room for more settlements.
The European Union responded within days, declaring that "settlement expansion, demolitions, and evictions are illegal under international law." Setting up a firing zone, the EU added, does not constitute the "imperative military reason" required under international humanitarian law to forcibly transfer an occupied population.
But the demolitions began anyway.
Life in the Caves
When bulldozers destroyed their homes, some families turned to solutions their ancestors had used for centuries. In the village of Khirbet al-Fakhit, one family cleared out space in a nearby cavern for themselves and their livestock to survive the winter.
The image is striking: in the twenty-first century, Palestinians retreating into caves because their modern homes had been demolished by a state that claims they were never there in the first place.
The difficulties extend beyond shelter. Water cisterns—essential for survival in this arid landscape—are regularly demolished for lacking permits. In Bir el-Eid, the village closest to an unauthorized Israeli settlement called Mitzpeh Yair, settlers vandalized the community's cistern by throwing an animal carcass into it, contaminating the water supply.
Roads are demolished. Solar panels are confiscated. Each act of development, each attempt to improve daily life, becomes grounds for destruction.
Violence From the Hilltops
The demolitions are only part of the pressure facing Masafer Yatta's residents. Settler violence has become increasingly brazen.
In September 2021, a mob of approximately eighty to one hundred masked Israeli settlers invaded the hamlet of Khirbat al-Mufkara. They threw stones at houses and damaged cars. Twelve Palestinians were injured, including a three-year-old child who was hit in the head while sleeping inside his home.
The incident prompted an unusual response from Israeli officials. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid called it "horrific" and "terror," adding: "This isn't the Israeli way, and it isn't the Jewish way. This is a violent and dangerous fringe, and we have a responsibility to bring them to justice."
Justice, however, has proven elusive.
In March 2025, dozens of Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and property in Jinba, injuring six people. Israeli security forces responded by arresting twenty-two Palestinians from Jinba. No Israeli settlers were arrested.
This asymmetry in enforcement has become a pattern. Settlers attack; Palestinians are detained. The hilltop outposts continue to expand.
Lucifer's Hill
The historian Ilan Pappé, known for his work documenting the 1948 displacement of Palestinians that they call the Nakba—the Catastrophe—has written extensively about Masafer Yatta. He views it as a microcosm of what he terms "everyday evil": the incremental colonization and ethnic cleansing that continues, largely unseen by the world, in the hills of the West Bank.
Pappé writes about a specific location he calls Lucifer's Hill, a rise overlooking Masafer Yatta where both the oppression and the resistance to it are visible to anyone willing to look. From this vantage point, he argues, "all anyone needs to grasp the realities of this ongoing oppression is one hill, and one hour."
In 2009, the Israeli geographer Ariel Handel included this area in what he termed a "map of disaster"—locations where the mechanisms of occupation are particularly visible and particularly destructive.
Pappé traces the evolution of tactics used to pressure residents to leave. First came the expropriation of Palestinian land through the World Zionist Organization and government designations that converted traditional grazing lands into areas forbidden for human settlement. Then came the firing zone declarations, which allowed the military to demolish houses, burn crops, seal wells, and block access to fields.
The method, Pappé argues, has intensified since 1999. What was once gradual pressure has become systematic destruction.
No Other Land
In February 2025, a documentary film called "No Other Land" won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film focuses on Masafer Yatta, chronicling the demolitions, the legal battles, and the daily resistance of people determined to remain on land their families have occupied for generations.
The title captures the essence of their position. They have no other land. This is their home.
The international recognition came with its own controversies. At the Oscar ceremony, the filmmakers—a collaboration between Palestinian and Israeli creators—used their acceptance speech to call for an end to the occupation and to draw attention to the ongoing violence in Gaza. The moment highlighted how the story of these nineteen small villages connects to the broader conflict consuming the region.
But for the shepherds of Masafer Yatta, the recognition may mean little in practical terms. The demolitions continue. The settlers expand. The military orders remain in force.
The Meaning of "Nothing"
There is something both tragic and defiant in the possible etymology of Masafer Yatta as the place where "nothing" could survive. The landscape is unforgiving—rocky, dry, extreme in both its heat and cold. It is not a place anyone would choose if they had easier options.
And yet here they are. Here they have been for generations, before any of the current boundaries or designations existed. The stone houses and the cave dwellings and the flocks of sheep represent a way of life that predates the state claiming the authority to erase it.
The population of the affected villages—roughly 1,144 people, half of them children—may seem small on a global scale. But the principles at stake are enormous. Can an occupying power simply declare civilians' homes a military zone and force them out? Can courts with settlements in their judges' backyards fairly adjudicate displacement claims? Can international law mean anything if its violations proceed openly and continuously?
The United Nations has stated that Israeli actions in Masafer Yatta could amount to a war crime. The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has called the expulsions a "fast-track war crime." The European Union has declared them illegal.
And still, the bulldozers come.
Existence as Resistance
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Masafer Yatta is not the injustice—injustice, after all, is common enough in this world. What stands out is the persistence.
Families whose homes have been destroyed clear out caves. Shepherds whose pastures have been seized by settlers find new routes for their flocks. Communities whose water cisterns have been demolished or poisoned find other sources. When the military denies charities and activists the permits to enter and help, the residents find ways to survive regardless.
This is not dramatic resistance in the sense that makes headlines. There are no armed fighters here, no rocket launchers, no tunnels. There is only the stubborn insistence on remaining—on continuing to exist in a place where powerful forces have decided you should not.
In Arabic, there is a concept called sumud, often translated as "steadfastness" or "perseverance." It describes the Palestinian strategy of remaining on the land, maintaining daily life, and refusing to be displaced despite overwhelming pressure. Masafer Yatta has become one of the most visible examples of sumud in the modern era.
The villages are small. The shepherds are not powerful. The legal battles have been lost. And yet, as of this writing, the people of Masafer Yatta remain. They graze their sheep in the rocky hills. They repair what has been destroyed. They document what is happening and share it with the world.
They wait for the next demolition order. And they prepare, once again, to refuse to leave.