A handful of residents return to Palestinian hamlet depopulated by settler violence

KHIRBET ZANUTA, West Bank — A handful of residents of an abandoned Palestinian hamlet returned on Tuesday to begin efforts to make it habitable again, following a High Court ruling last month ordering the military and the police to enable them to take up residence once more.

According to the head of Khirbet Zanuta, Faez Tel, five residents went to the hamlet on Tuesday accompanied by security services, but did not stay overnight since there are no longer any habitable structures there.

Once repairs to some of the buildings have been made and tents brought in to the hamlet, in the South Hebron Hills region of the West Bank, more residents will begin to take up full-time residence once again, said Tel.

The residents were supposed to have returned on Monday after Tel and the hamlet’s legal representatives, the Haqel human rights organization, coordinated the move with the IDF and the police following the ruling by the High Court of Justice in February.

But only Tel himself and one other resident turned up on Monday. He said other residents had been too frightened to return because of concerns about renewed settler violence, the reason why they had fled Khirbet Zanuta twice in the last 16 months.

Some 36 families who had been living in Zanuta fled at the end of October 2023 due to a huge spike in settler violence and harassment following the October 7 Hamas invasion and atrocities in southern Israel, and the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

In the residents’ absence, many of the stone houses in Khirbet Zanuta were destroyed or damaged, apparently by local settler extremists, although law enforcement authorities failed to identify the perpetrators. A school built by the EU in the hamlet was also demolished.

In July last year, the High Court ordered the IDF and police to enable the residents to return to their homes and some villagers moved back in August, but fled again in mid September due to renewed settler attacks.

The residents filed a contempt of court motion against the IDF and police for failing to protect them despite the High Court ruling, prompting strong criticism of the security forces by Supreme Court President Isaac Amit, who presided over the case.

The court in February ordered the security authorities to once again enable the villagers to return to Khirbet Zanuta, and to permit them to repair damage done in their absence.

“We were born here, our entire lives are here, as it was for my father and my grandfather, everyone is like this here, but there is no security,” Tel told The Times of Israel amid the ruins of Khirbet Zanuta on Monday.

He described the settler extremists who have menaced the hamlet’s residents as a problem for both Palestinians and Israelis, and said they were seizing even more land in the region.

Tel pointed to a hill just opposite Khirbet Zanuta where bulldozers and other machinery were operating, and where a mobile home and a temporary structure have been placed.

The construction work appears to be the beginning of a new illegal settlement outpost. The IDF did not respond to a request for comment as to the nature of the construction site.

Tel said the new outpost was established just three weeks ago.

“They are taking all the land. There is no place left where they are not taking land, not making problems and causing violence,” he said, adding that the outpost was now impeding access to Khirbet Zanuta and other villages for residents of the nearby Palestinian town of Dahariya.

Khirbet Zanuta has long faced the prospect of removal by official state authorities, because there is no zoning masterplan for the village and the stone structures built there since the 1980s by its Palestinian residents are thus considered illegal. Such zoning plans are almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain in Area C of the West Bank, where the hamlet is located.

Demolition orders were issued against the buildings in 2007, but after years of legal proceedings in the High Court, the state agreed in 2017 not to implement the orders until it drew up new planning criteria.

After fleeing the hamlet in October 2023 and again in September 2024, many of Khirbet Zanuta’s residents moved to Dahariya, where they have been living in the homes of their extended families, Tel said.

The residents who returned on Tuesday began preparations for repairing the hamlet’s stone buildings, removing the rubble and debris strewn about the site.

On Monday morning, Tel arrived in Khirbet Zanuta alongside one other resident, his uncle Mustafa al-Tel, while several journalists and Palestinian activists also made their way to the village. A gaggle of Israeli civil rights activists were present at the foot of the hill below the hamlet.

Three IDF reservist soldiers arrived at the site along with several police officers to oversee the return of the villagers, but left approximately two hours later when it became clear that the residents would not be coming back that day.

“I don’t know what will be here. The situation is bad,” said Mustafa al-Tel, who pointed to a patch of land where his olive trees now lie broken and uprooted. Al-Tel accuses settlers of having destroyed them at some stage in September last year, after the residents abandoned the hamlet for a second time.

“They [the settlers] say this place is theirs, that two [peoples] can’t live here. Their work says this,” he said, pointing to his ruined olive grove.

“These olive trees — who were they bothering? This breaks my heart.”

Despite the village being declared a closed military zone where Israeli citizens may not enter, several Israeli cars whose occupants were dressed in civilian clothes made their way back and forth to the hamlet unimpeded by the security services.

Palestinian activists identified some of the occupants of the vehicles as members of the Mount Hebron Regional Council.

An ATV operated by two young women who said they were from nearby settlements entered the area of the village at one stage, as did a young man also from a nearby settlement, who rode up to the dwelling on horseback despite the presence of police and IDF soldiers at the site.

When he was challenged on his way up to the village by Israeli activists gathered below the hamlet, who said he was not allowed to enter the closed military zone, the rider shouted back that he was “the boss” and that he was allowed to go “anywhere I want.”

At one stage the IDF insisted that the journalists, and even the Palestinian activists who were not residents of Khirbet Zanuta, leave the hamlet.

Faez Tel said that despite the difficulties he would persist with his efforts to enable the residents of Khirbet Zanuta to return in safety to the hamlet, expressing confidence that Israel’s judicial system and the High Court specifically would uphold their rights.

“I do not despair. I work through legal channels. Right now there is war, it’s not a good situation. But court rulings now in favor of Zanuta will help us in the future,” he said.