Israel is Destroying My Entire Community and the World is Doing Nothing to Stop It
By Basel Adra
Every night, I go to sleep with my camera next to me, prepared to be awakened at any moment by the sound of Israeli military bulldozers coming to destroy my home. I’ve already photographed soldiers forcing dozens of families out of their homes in Masafer Yatta over the past month, part of the largest forced displacement of Palestinians carried out by Israel in decades. If the international community doesn’t take immediate action, it will only be a matter of time before my entire community is gone.
I was born in Masafer Yatta, a small Palestinian agricultural town south of Hebron that is subject to Israeli military rule. My family and neighbors have lived here for generations, digging our homes from limestone caves dotting the hillsides, later building houses. We make a living herding sheep and tending olive trees. In 1981, Israel’s occupying army came and declared Masafer Yatta a military training zone. In 1999, the army forced 700 villagers onto trucks, unceremoniously dumping them outside the boundaries of Masafer Yatta. Two hundred families filed a petition with the Israeli court, hoping to save our community. A temporary injunction was issued, allowing us to remain in Masafer Yatta until the process concluded. Last month, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled with the army, immediately permitting our displacement. To be clear, under international law Israel is an occupying power in the West Bank and has no legal right to force us to leave our homes and land.
Sadly, the court’s decision didn’t surprise me. It is part of Israel’s systematic dispossession of Palestinians dating to the establishment of the state in 1948, when more than three-quarters of all Palestinians were expelled from their homes. This is known as the Nakba (“catastrophe”). Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians has continued unabated ever since. Today, Masafer Yatta is just one of many Palestinian communities threatened by Israel. Almost 1,000 Palestinians face forced expulsion in occupied East Jerusalem neighborhoods including Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan; thousands more are at risk of displacement in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank and in the Negev desert in southern Israel.
At the same time as Israel kicks Palestinians out of our homes and destroys our communities, it expands illegal settlements for Jewish Israelis on land that was stolen from us. Days after the court ruled it could destroy our community, Israel announced plans for 4,500 new settlement units on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank.
My parents raised me as a proud activist for our community, like them. They started a school, which I attended. My mother founded a women’s handicraft cooperative. Whenever Israeli settlers attacked our herders, poisoned our sheep, or the army demolished homes, my parents took me to demonstrate outside the Israeli police station across from my village. They encouraged me when I decided to learn photography, so I could record our struggle for the world to see.
Today, I’m documenting the premeditated, slow-motion destruction of my community, as the world watches. My photos, social media posts, and interviews amplify voices of desperate families. Take ten-year-old Ahmad, who I sometimes drive to school. The army destroyed his home on May 11. Ahmad, his parents, and six siblings now live in a sheep pen converted into a make-shift tent. “We barely sleep,” he told me. The previous day, I photographed soldiers confiscating shovels from my neighbor who was building an animal pen. Israel has one of the world’s most powerful militaries, backed by a global superpower–and this is how it behaves? The absurdity would be comical, were the situation not so tragic.
Israel doesn’t like its oppression recorded. Days after the court verdict, I was documenting Israeli soldiers demolishing a sheep pen. The soldiers knocked me down and kicked me in my stomach. A few weeks later, my father awoke me at 2:30 am; there were army jeeps blocking the entrance to our village, and outside our door. I grabbed my camera and walked outside, as soldiers forced their way into the mosque, breaking the door, and smashing furniture, including Qu’ran stands. About a dozen soldiers entered my home, to “search.” This was the third time in six months that soldiers searched my home. Previously, they detonated stun grenades outside my door, and twice detained my father, attacking me as I photographed.
Documenting our grassroots resistance is difficult but it brings me hope and strength.
Yet it will take more than my camera or the support of solidarity activists to save Masafer Yatta. The world, including the Biden administration, must pressure Israel to stop the destruction of our community and others under threat from Israel.
Until then, I will continue to document the attempted destruction of my beloved Masafer Yatta–and our resistance. This is our home. Each time they destroy, we will return, and we will rebuild.
Basel Adra is a journalist and activist who lives in Masafer Yatta.
