Masafer Yatta is a beautiful mountainous region dotted with twenty ancient Palestinian villages, on the Southern edge of the West Bank. The villagers lead a farming lifestyle, many live in old stone structures and caves.

The small hamlets appear on maps from before the establishment of Israel, for example, in this British map of Palestine from 1945 (like Al Mufaqqara, Al Markaz, Al Fakheit, Jinba), yet the Israeli occupation doesn’t recognize their existence. The villages were erased from Israeli maps.

In 1980, the Israeli military declared the land of Masafer Yatta a “closed military training” zone - meaning it was officially declared off limits for Palestinians. As later revealed in two secret Israeli state documents, Ariel Sharon, former Israeli Prime Minister, then Agricultural Minister, explained at the time that this was done to displace the villages and allocate their land to Israeli settlements, Basel Adra, the film’s director, was born in one of these villages in 1996. Three years later, in 1999, the military ordered all Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta to leave, so soldiers could use their land as a military training ground.

That’s how a struggle began to save the villages from expulsion, led by Basel’s parents and neighbours. The Palestinian residents of the area, who have no voting rights and are living under occupation, also approached a group of Israeli lawyers, who petitioned Israel's high court against the forced expulsion in 2000.

In 2022, after a two decade long legal battle, the high court gave the military a green light to carry out the expulsion - which is the largest single act of forced transfer carried out in the West Bank since it was occupied in 1967. The decision to destroy the Palestinian villages and evict around 1,800 people so the military can use their land for tank training exercises triggered worldwide condemnation and is considered by many, including Amnesty International and UN Human rights experts, to be a war crime.

One way the military carries out this expulsion is by a policy of systematic home demolitions. The Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank rejects more than 98% of Palestinian requests for building permits, while allowing settlers in the area to build freely. This colonial policy uses military law to force entire families in Masafer Yatta to leave their historical lands - since they are unable to build anything legally. All of their homes, schools, water wells, and roads are considered “illegal” by the army and marked for destruction. Their mere existence, on their private land, is illegal.

Our film is the first documentary to shed light on the systematic policy of forced expulsion through home demolitions. When homes are destroyed, families in Masafer Yatta have nowhere to go, they can either rebuild, become homeless, or rent houses in crowded Palestinian cities where there is no space for grazing sheep and cultivating land. The loss of land is thus a loss of community and a way of life - they stop working as farmers.

Since October 7th, the situation in the West Bank has dramatically deteriorated: extreme settlers used violence to evict 16 entire Palestinian villages all over the West Bank.

To learn more, see how you can help, or join the struggle to save masafer yatta, click here.