Israel warns Palestinian village will be demolished if residents refuse to relocate
State revives 2007 demolition orders against Khirbet Zanuta, after High Court ruling last month allowed Palestinian residents who fled settler violence to return
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
The Civil Administration, an agency of the Defense Ministry, has warned the residents of the Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta that their homes will be demolished by October 1 if they do not agree to a relocation plan it has proposed.
The warning came just weeks after the residents won a victory in the High Court of Justice, which ordered the army and the police to enable them to return to the village after they fled in late October last year, following persistent violence and harassment directed at them by local extremist settlers.
Following the issuance of the warning, Dr. Quamar Mishirqi-Assad, an attorney who represents the residents of the village, accused the state of seeking to continue the work of the settlers who had been trying to oust local Palestinians from their homes. She pointed out that the demolition orders the Civil Administration is now seeking to carry out have been in abeyance for seven years.
Khirbet Zanuta is a Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills region of the West Bank, in Area C where Israel has full security and civil control. The stone structures built there over the years by its Palestinian residents are illegal since there is no zoning masterplan for the village and in general are extremely rare for Palestinians in Area C.
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 in 2007 while it drew up new planning criteria. The court also ordered the state to give 30 days’ notice if it did decide to implement the demolition orders.
After the October 7 Hamas invasion and atrocities, settler violence against Palestinians spiked across the West Bank, especially in the South Hebron Hills and Jordan Valley regions, and over 1,000 Palestinians living in some 15 communities in Area C fled, including the approximately 150 residents of Khirbet Zanuta.
Following their flight, several homes and other buildings in the village were unlawfully destroyed by unknown perpetrators, including a school built by the EU for the villagers.
In August, the High Court ordered the IDF and the police to enable the villagers to return, and some 40 residents went back to the village. But the IDF prohibited them from repairing their homes or even restoring the metal roofs of their dwellings that they had taken with them when they left in October, meaning they have had to live without roofs over their heads since they returned.
On September 1, Lt. Col. Adam Avidan from the Civil Administration, an agency of the Defense Ministry that runs civilian affairs in the West Bank, met with Mishirqi-Assad to inform her of the decision to implement the old demolition orders.
Avidan told Mishirqi-Assad that it would be possible to relocate the residents of Khirbet Zanuta to a location some three kilometers away on territory still inside Area C, albeit close to Areas A and B where the Palestinian Authority has full or partial control.
Avidan noted that there is an archaeological site where Zanuta is located which, he said, ruled out the legalization of the village at its current location.
The official said that the Civil Administration and its planning authorities would be “entrusted” with the planning and zoning work necessary for the relocation of the village.
“If agreement to this proposal will be given then the planning process will be advanced, and all the commitments of the state and the petitioners in the petition will remain unchanged,” Avidan wrote in a formal summation of his meeting.
“If [this] alternative is rejected by you, this meeting should be seen as an announcement of the intent to carry out enforcement at the site after 30 days,” Avidan said.
The 30-day warning notice began on September 1, meaning the residents have until October 1 to respond.
Khirbet Zanuta’s residents have yet to respond to the proposal, although Mishirqi-Assad noted that the proposed site is subject to property claims by other West Bank residents.
“The state is threatening the residents that if they do not accept its proposal to evacuate their village to an area close to Area A and B, they will destroy the remains of the ruined homes that remain in their village,” said Mishirqi-Assad, co-founder of the Haqel human rights organization.
“There is no doubt that the timing of the state’s proposal, precisely after the return of the villagers by order of the High Court to their village after the violent expulsion they underwent, is designed to formalize and complete the expulsion of Khirbet Zanuta’s residents that was carried out by the settlers, and the ethnic cleansing that is being done in Area C.”
According to the left-wing B’tselem organization, which campaigns against the settlements, several generations of Khirbet Zanuta residents lived in natural caves in the area, as other people living in the area still do.
They began building stone houses and temporary structures in the 1980s after the caves began to collapse due to natural causes, but did so without permits from Israeli authorities.
