Khallet al-Daba, occupied West Bank – At nine o’clock on a Monday morning in May, the quiet of Khallet al-Daba was shattered by the sound of bulldozers and other demolition vehicles approaching. Accompanying them were Israeli soldiers pouring into the village, forcing families out of their homes and driving livestock into the open.
By the end of May 5, the small community in the heart of Masafer Yatta had been reduced to rubble. It was just one of at least four mass demolitions conducted by Israeli forces this year. For residents, the repeated demolitions are nothing less than a “new Nakba” – an echo of the mass displacement and ethnic cleansing Palestinians suffered in 1948.
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Dozens of military vehicles, armoured carriers and jeeps sealed off the village as the demolitions took place in May, according to locals. Women carrying infants, men still dazed from being forced suddenly from their homes, and children screaming in fear stood under the burning sun for six hours. Behind them, the walls of their houses were turned into rubble.
Families have since been attempting to adapt to a life uprooted. Some have sheltered in underground caves dug years ago as makeshift refuges. Others have crowded into fragile tents that cannot withstand either the scorching summer or the freezing winter.
“This demolition destroyed the lifelines of Khallet al-Daba: water, electricity, solar energy, drinking wells, sewage tanks, and even street lighting,” said Mohammed Rabia, who is the head of the nearby at-Tuwani village council, and deals with Bedouin issues throughout Masafer Yatta. “We’ve returned to the Stone Age, living in caves and tents without the necessities of life… but no one has left the village.”
Military training zones
Khallet al-Daba lies at the heart of Masafer Yatta, a cluster of 12 Palestinian villages spread across rolling hills south of Hebron, in the southern West Bank.
The United Nations has previously reported that 1,150 people live in Masafer Yatta, but Rabia says the true number is about 4,500 people. They mostly herd sheep and farm wheat and barley, which produces the majority of the income for the Palestinian population in this region.
But, as with approximately 20 percent of land in the West Bank, Israel declared part of the area a military training zone – ‘Firing Zone 918’ – in the 1980s and has been trying to empty it of Palestinians ever since.
The Israeli military has previously justified the May 5 demolition as necessary because of the location of the village in the military training zone.
The practice of declaring areas of the West Bank military training zones was revealed by an Israeli-Palestinian research group, Akevot, as a tactic to expel Palestinian villagers proposed in 1981 by then-Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, who later became Israel’s prime minister in the early 2000s.
Homes here are repeatedly demolished under military orders. Residents say the justifications vary – construction without permits, proximity to military training areas, or land claimed for settlement outposts – but the goal is the same: displacement.
A press release last week from Frederieke van Dongen, the humanitarian affairs manager of the aid organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF), agreed with that conclusion, calling Israel’s actions in Masafer Yatta “part of a broader policy of ethnic cleansing, aimed at forcibly transferring Palestinians from the area”.
‘If I leave, I will die’
Among those who were forced to watch their homes collapse this spring was 65-year-old Samiha Muhammad al-Dababseh, a mother of eight who has lived in the village her whole life. Her weathered face carries the strain of decades of hardship.
“I screamed, ‘The army is here!’” she recalled. “Within minutes, soldiers were storming the houses, forcibly removing us without allowing us to take anything – not food or clothes. They pushed me violently and told me, ‘This is not your land. You will not have a home or shelter left.’”
Samiha’s family had already endured three demolitions prior to May. After their stone house was destroyed in May, they were forced to return to a cave that Samiha had dug out by hand and turned into a shelter with her late husband. The women and children slept inside the cave, while the men spread out on the ground outside its entrance.
But then, on September 17, even the cave was destroyed in yet another Israeli attack, which also targeted residential tents, water tanks, and mobile bathrooms, according to the villagers.
“If one tree remains in Khallet al-Daba, I will stay in its shade,” Samiha said. The land is my soul. If I leave, I will die.”
Samiha said that she was now living under a tree. “We live in fear of settler attacks, ” she explained. “Despite everything, we will not leave.
Living in fear
Samiha’s youngest son, 31-year-old Mujahid al-Dababseh, shares a cave with his wife and three children – as well as 11 other relatives. The farmer says that nights in the cave can be long and frightening.
“The children suffer from nightmares of bulldozers and settler attacks,” he said. “I fear [they will be attacked by] snakes, insects, or from thirst due to the lack of water. Our lives are very difficult; there is no electricity, no food, no safety.”
Mujahid remembers placing stones with his father when they built their home. Watching it collapse was like losing “a piece of my life”, he said.
“The [Israeli] occupation has turned Khallet al-Daba into a second Gaza – they wiped out everything above ground, leaving only rubble,” Mujahid said. “But they failed. No Palestinian child will ever emigrate from here.”
The village is home to just 120 people, a third of them children, all members of the extended Dababseh clan. Its name recalls the hyenas (daba in Arabic) that once roamed the valleys. Today, residents say, it is settlers and soldiers who stalk their land.
For many here, the repeated demolitions are not just about homes, but about erasing life itself – water wells, solar panels, sewage systems, even street lighting. Each time, residents rebuild what they can. Each time, they vow not to leave.
Khallet al-Daba is now a patchwork of caves, rubble and tents. Yet it remains a symbol of Palestinian steadfastness, residents say, rooted in a struggle that has lasted more than seven decades.
“This is an ongoing Nakba,” said Rabia. “But the people have chosen to resist with their presence. Four times, the houses fell. Four times, the people stayed.”
