Israeli bulldozers demolish most of a West Bank hamlet, displacing dozens of Palestinians

JERUSALEM — Israeli military bulldozers demolished most of a Palestinian Bedouin village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday, taking out the hamlet’s infrastructure and leaving residents wandering amid the rubble of their homes. The bulldozers rolled into Khalet Al-Dab in the morning, taking down most of the village’s structures, said Basel Adra, a filmmaker, journalist and activist from the area.

Nine homes, five tents and five animal pens were demolished, said Mohammed Rabia, head of the village council in the area.

COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for administrative affairs in the occupied West Bank, said it demolished the buildings because they were built illegally in an area designated as a closed firing zone.

Palestinians have long said that securing Israeli permission to build in the West Bank is nearly impossible.

Ali Dababsa, 87, a shepherd who watched the forces demolish his home, looked aghast. "We want to die under this soil, this land is precious to us and we are the owners of this land,” he said, as he and other villagers gathered on a hilltop.

The demolitions took place in an area of the West Bank known as Masafer Yatta, where radical Israeli settlers are expanding a network of outposts in the area. Palestinians say the settlers operate with the tacit consent of the Israeli state, which carries out home demolitions and rarely prosecutes settlers for instances of violence against Palestinians.

“Since Oct. 7, the Israeli army with the settlers established three illegal outposts around this community and now erasing this village to create more and more Israeli illegal settlements in the area,” said Adra, who co-directed the Oscar-award winning film “No Other Land,” about Palestinian expulsion and settler violence in the area.

The destruction comes as Israeli forces are set to demolish over 100 homes across two northern refugee camps in the West Bank.