A Miserable Little Village At The Center Of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

[Purveyor]

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The Palestinian village of Susiya is threatened with demolition by the Israeli military, which says the structures were built without permits. The Palestinian residents have been supported by the European Community, angering the Israeli authorities. (Willam Booth/The Washington Post)

By William Booth August 28 at 5:41 PM

SUSIYA, West Bank — For a quick reality check on the current stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there’s no better place to visit than this little village of miserable huts and sheep pens in the middle of nowhere.

The hamlet in the hills south of Hebron has become an improbable proxy in a cold war waged among Jewish settlers, the Israeli government, Western diplomats, peace activists and the 340 or so Arab herders who once inhabited caves on the site and now live in squalid tents.

Israel’s military authority in the West Bank wants to demolish the Palestinian community, contending that the ramshackle structures made of old tires and weathered tarpaulins were built without permits and must come down.

The Palestinian residents insist they are not squatters but heirs to the land they have farmed and grazed since the Ottoman era.

more...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/a-miserable-little-village-at-the-center-of-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/2016/08/28/50ce6266-661f-11e6-b4d8-33e931b5a26d_story.html

[monmouth4]

1. They just can't leave these poor people alone, can they..n/t

[6chars]

2. aaawwww!!!

[shira]

3. No such town of Sussiya existed during multiple British census's, recent aerial photos....

What's being demolished are very recent illegal structures.

http://www.worldwideweirdnews.com/2013/06/n27920.html
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/174667
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/the-saga-of-ancient-palestinian-susiya-the-town-that-never-was/2013/06/30/

[Little Tich]

4. You're full of hasbara - Susya existed long before the founding of Israel.

SUSYA: A HISTORY OF LOSS

Source: Rabbis for Human Rights, 07 November 2013

Palestinian Susya- A History of Expulsion and Loss
The Palestinian village of Susya has existed for hundreds of years, long predating the Jewish Israeli settlement of Susya, which was founded in its neighborhood in 1983. Written records of the existence of a Palestinian community in its location exist from as far back as 1830, and the village is also found on British Mandate maps from 1917. The residents of Khirbet Susya, who today reside in temporary structures north of the Israeli settlement, originally lived in the village of Susya Al-Qadime, located near the ancient synagogue at Susya, where there was a settled village until the 1980s. The Palestinian residents’ ownership of this land is established in law.

First Expulsion
In June 1986, approximately three years after the Israeli settlement of Susya was established in the area, the Palestinian village’s land was expropriated for “public use” and the location was designated as an archeological site. The State’s use of expropriation procedures proves that it recognized that this land was privately owned. Later, the expropriated land was attached to the regional jurisdiction of the Israeli settlement of Susya. Entry to this area is forbidden to Palestinians under the standing military order that forbids Palestinians from entering settlement territory. Village residents were expelled from their homes and their lands, and lost most of their property. The residents were unable to resist the expulsion, which, though conducted through a legal mechanism, did not take the fate of the villagers into account. The expelled village residents settled in caves and tin shacks in an area some 500 meters from their village, in an area today named Rujum al-Hamri, near the settlement Susya. The villagers continued to cultivate their (privately owned) lands. Today, Israeli settlers reside in an illegal outpost located inside the archeological site.

Second Expulsion
The villagers’ proximity to the red-roofed settlement, whose Israeli residents were uninterested in their “new” neighbors, led to their second expulsion. One night in 1990, the Palestinian villagers were loaded onto trucks and taken to an area near Zif Junction – some 15 km north of Susya. Having been expelled from their village and then from their new homes in Rujum, the residents returned to their privately owned agricultural lands and began to live in caves and huts, each family residing on its own agricultural plots from then on. The village’s communal life ceased to exist.

Third Expulsion
The Israeli settlement of Susya has elected to have no perimeter fence. Its residents subscribe to the ideology according to which having no fence means having access to more land. And indeed, in the late 1990s, the isolated farm originally called Magen David Farm and today known as Mitzpe Yair was expanded, and the prosperous agricultural outpost of Dahlia Farm was established. The farm earns an income from a large herd of sheep, which requires a large area of pasturelands to graze. In those years, the settlers of Susya and its outposts seized lands from their Palestinian neighbors and in effect created an unauthorized restricted area to which Palestinians are forbidden from entering. In several instances, Palestinians found on these lands were shot and killed. In July 2001, following the murder of the settler Yair Har-Sinai while he was herding sheep in the area, the residents of Palestinian Susya became the targets of acts of revenge and another expulsion. The expulsion was carried out without warning and was especially violent. Caves were destroyed, wells were blocked, fields were vandalized and animals killed. The expulsion was accompanied by violent arrests and beatings. According to the villagers’ testimony, some of those Israelis present at the expulsion were civilians and not soldiers or police officers – they were apparently settlers familiar with the area who came to supervise the expulsion.

Read more: http://rhr.org.il/eng/2013/11/susya-a-history-of-loss/

[shira]

5. The closest thing on old maps from the past 2 centuries is the ruins, not village.....

Last edited Tue Aug 30, 2016, 08:30 AM - Edit history (1)

....of Sussiya. Sorry. No British Census from the Mandate period claim any such village existed. Aerial photos from the 80's and 90's show no village either.

Your sources, as usual, are bullshit.

[Little Tich]

6. Wikipedia: Susya

(snip)

Khirbet Susya
Origins and background
Khirbet Susya, called Susya al-Qadima ('Old Susya') was a village attached to the archaeological site at Khirbet Susiya.

In the early 19th century, many residents of the two big villages in the area of South Mount Hebron, Yatta and Dura, started to immigrate to ruins and caves in the area and became 'satellite villages' (daughters) to the mother town. Reasons for the expansion were lack of land for agriculture and construction in the mother towns which resulted in high prices of land, rivalry between the mother-towns chamulas wishing to control more land and resources and being a security buffer which made it more difficult for gangs of robber to raid the mother villages. Caves are used by local as residences, storage space and sheepfold.[81] The affiliation between the satellite villages and mother town remained. While some of the satellites became permanent villages with communities of 100s, others remained temporary settlements which served the shepherds and falla?in.for several months every year. In 1981-2 it was estimated 100-120 families dwelt in caves permanently in the South Mount Hebron region while 750-850 families lived there temporarily.

Yaakov Havakook, who lived with the locals in the region for several years, writes that the community at Khirbet Susya was seasonal and didn't live in there year-round. Families of shepherds arrived after the first rain (October–November), stayed during the grazing season and left in April end or beginning of May. They were known for a special kind of cheese produced in their caves,

According to Rabbi for Human Rights, in 1948, the preexisting population was augmented by an influx of Palestinian refugees expelled during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War from the area of Ramat Arad, who purchased land in the area. In 1982 an Israel settlement planner, Plia Albeck, examined the area of Susiya, the synagogue and the Palestinian village built on and around it, and finding it legally difficult to advance Jewish settlement, wrote:

“The [ancient] synagogue is located in an area that is known as the lands of Khirbet Susya, and around an Arab village between the ancient ruins. There is a formal registration on the land of Khirbet Susya with the Land Registry, according to which this land, amounting to approximately 3000 dunam [approximately 741 acres], is privately held by many Arab owners. Therefore the area proximal to the [ancient] synagogue is in all regards privately owned.”

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susya#Khirbet_Susya