High Court orders police and IDF to again let Palestinians return to West Bank hamlet
Ruling comes after security forces were instructed last year to allow residents of Khirbet Zanuta to go back, before renewed settler violence forced villagers to flee a second time
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter

The High Court of Justice ordered the police and the IDF to again enable residents of the Palestinian hamlet of Khirbet Zanuta to return there, after they were forced to flee for a second time in less than two years due to settler violence and harassment.
The court on Monday ordered the security services to allow Khirbet Zanuta residents to return home by February 16; provide them ongoing protection from settler violence and harassment; and permit the villagers to repair damage to their homes and other buildings in the hamlet that was caused in their absence.
The case took on heightened significance due to allegations, backed by prominent Israeli legal scholars in a submission to the court, that the conduct of the Israel Defense Forces, police and other state agencies amounted to the forcible transfer of Khirbet Zanuta’s residents, which is illegal under international law and possibly a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Residents of Khirbet Zanuta, located in the South Hebron Hills region of the West Bank, fled at the end of October 2023 due to persistent attacks against them and the village’s infrastructure that month by extremist settlers living in the area, including in illegal settlement outposts.
Following a petition filed by the Haqel civil rights organization, the High Court issued an order to the police and IDF on July 29, 2024, to enable the return of the residents to the hamlet, which they did on August 21.
However, renewed attacks by settlers, the refusal of the security services to protect the villagers, and steps by security services to prevent residents from making Khirbet Zanuta habitable after the destruction of homes and critical infrastructure, led to the depopulation of the village once again.

The last villagers left Khirbet Zanuta by September 12.
Haqel filed a contempt of court motion against the police, IDF and other state agencies for failing to comply with the original court order, resulting in Monday’s ruling.
Incoming Supreme Court President Isaac Amit and Justices Noam Sohlberg and Daphne Barak Erez referenced the July ruling in their new decision, but stressed they were not actually ruling on the contempt of court request.
Instead, they ordered the security services to enable Khirbet Zanuta residents who fled the hamlet to return within the next 13 days.
“The police and the army must continuously and diligently ensure the removal of trespassers from the village and private lands” the court added, in reference to the repeated settler attacks against the villagers.
During a hearing on the petition in January, Amit accused the security services of doing nothing to enforce the law against such attacks, and pointed to photographic evidence of settlers inside the hamlet and among homes there as proof that the police and IDF were not protecting the villagers.
In another significant aspect of Monday’s ruling, the court ordered the security services and other state authorities to allow the residents to repair their homes.
Following the original depopulation of the hamlet, numerous buildings — including homes and an EU-built school — were demolished or badly damaged, apparently by the same extremist settlers who forced the residents out in the first place.

When the villagers returned, they were prohibited from repairing the damage, leaving their homes uninhabitable, which the petitioners claimed violated the essence of the original court order.
The court’s ruling that the villagers must be allowed to repair the damage will likely make it easier for them to take up residence in the hamlet once again.
In its contempt of court motion, Haqeil wrote that in the weeks in which the residents of Khirbet Zanuta tried to return to their homes following the High Court ruling, they were “persecuted without mercy by the settlers and the respondents, and ultimately were expelled for a second time.”
It said that “over 100 incidents of harassment were recorded” in the three weeks between the residents’ return to the village and second exodus, “in real time as well as after the fact,” but that police failed to respond to any of them.
Appended to the contempt request was the position of five prominent Israeli legal scholars who asserted in their submission to the court that the state’s actions in failing to protect Khirbet Zanuta’s residents constituted forcible transfer under international law, which is a war crime.
Khirbet Zanuta is located in Area C of the West Bank, where Israel has full security and civil control. The stone structures built there over the years by its Palestinian residents are illegal as there is no zoning masterplan for the village, which is extremely rare for Palestinians to obtain from the Civil Administration, an agency of the Defense Ministry that runs civil concerns in the territory.
Following years of legal proceedings in the High Court, the state agreed in 2017 not to implement demolition orders issued against the buildings in Khirbet Zanuta while it drew up new planning criteria.
According to Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, which campaigns against settlements, several generations of Khirbet Zanuta residents lived in natural caves in the area during the 20th century, as other people living in the area still do.

They began building stone houses and temporary structures in the 1980s, however, after the caves began to collapse due to natural causes, but did so without permits from Israeli authorities.
In September last year, just weeks after the original court order that the residents be allowed to return to their homes, the Civil Administration warned the villagers that their homes would be demolished by October 1 if they did not agree to a relocation plan it has proposed.
The villagers have presented an alternate proposal to the Civil Administration, which it has not yet answered.
Head of Mount Hebron Regional Council Eliram Azoulai strongly criticized Monday’s ruling, saying it was “encouraging illegal settlement and construction,” and called on Defense Minister Israel Katz to enforce the demolition orders against Khirbet Zanuta.