Residents in West Bank's Masafer Yatta face Israeli demolitions

On September 2, the Israeli army demolished the village of Khirbet a-Taban in the occupied West Bank. The village is located in Masafer Yatta, an area Israel declared a restricted military zone. Residents of the area have been reporting an increase in demolitions by the Israeli army and harassment by Israeli settlers since the October 7 Hamas attack. 

The Israeli army demolished the 12 buildings of Khirbet a-Taban on September 2, 2026, leaving its 70 residents homeless.

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Residents now have no choice but to live in makeshift tents. One of them, Issa Hamamdeh, told our team:

“My sheep pen is gone. They demolished the wall. They also destroyed the well and the structure around it. And two rooms of the house: the room I use for sleeping, and the kitchen.”

Khirbet a-Taban is one of 12 villages in an area known as Masafer Yatta. A total of 1,200 Palestinians have been living in uncertainty since the 1980s, when Israel declared the area a “firing zone” for military training.

In 2022, the Israeli Supreme Court endorsed the army’s claims to the area.

Families in eight villages, including Khirbet a-Taban, face a constant threat of being expelled.

Israeli human rights groups, including B'Tselem and Breaking the Silence, have denounced the demolitions, saying the army’s claim to need a training ground is a pretext for expelling the Palestinian population.

‘They steal our sheep and damage our property almost every day’

Since Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th 2023, residents of Masafer Yatta report an increase in demolitions by the Israeli army and harassment by Israeli settlers.

We spoke to Nidal Younes, head of the Masafer Yatta village council:

“They steal our sheep and damage our property almost every day. They damage our farmland, the fields we have sown for the winter harvest. The settlers even steal things from inside houses in the region. Unfortunately, this kind of thing has become part of our day-to-day life."

We contacted the Israeli government, which said the buildings were destroyed because they are “illegal structures that had been erected within an IDF firing zone, in an area where construction is prohibited”.

The UN says Israeli settlers have set up a dozen outposts in the zone and estimates that 3,800 Palestinians – nearly half of them children – have had to leave their homes because of settler violence, demolitions and evictions in 2026.