Susya - Modern Era: Local Population, Israeli Settlement and Conflict

Modern Era: Local Population, Israeli Settlement and Conflict

Palestinian Susya, called Susya al-Qadima ('Old Susya') dating back to 1832, was a village constituted of permanent cave homes. The Israeli settlement, which as of 2006 has a population of 737, was established between May and September 1983, on 1,800 dunams of land. In 1986, Israel expropriated part of the village's residential ground for an 'archeological park', evicting several villagers from their homes. They moved to nearby land they owned to restart their lives. According to David Shulman, the number of Palestinians of Susya affected by the 1986 expulsion was over 1,500 people, and they resettled nearby on land they owned at a site called Rujum al-Hamri, near the new Israeli settlement at Susya. For some decades they were subject, Shulman states, to many violent attacks, and settler recourse to both civil and military courts, to drive them out.

Since then the local villages, like Palestinian Susya, have been losing land, and being cut off from each other, as the nearby settlements of Carmel, Maon, Susya and Beit Yatir began to be built and developed, and illegal outposts established. The second expulsion took place in 1990, when Rujum al-Hamri was evacuated by the army, and the inhabitants loaded onto trucks and dumped on a roadside at the edge of a desert. Most returned and rebuilt on a rocky escarpment within their traditional agricultural and grazing territory.Their wells taken, they were forced to buy water from nearby Yatta. Since 2000 Jewish settlers in Susiya have denied Palestinians access to 10 cisterns in the area, and try to block their access to others. Soil at Susiya, with a market value of NIS 2,000 per truckload, is also taken from lands belonging to the village of Yatta.

The third expulsion occurred in June 2001, when settler civilians and soldiers drove the Palestinians of Susya out, destroying their tents and caves, blocking their cisterns, killing their livestock and digging up their agricultural land. The settlers established a "Dahlia Farm" in the same year, and an outpost was set up on the archeological site. On Sept 26 of the same year, by an order of the Israeli Supreme Court, these structures were ordered to be destroyed and the land returned to the Palestinians. Settlers and the IDF prevented the villagers from reclaiming their land, some 750 acres. The villagers made an appeal to the same court to be allowed to reclaim their lands and live without harassment. Some 93 events of settler violence were listed. The settlers made a counter-appeal, and one family that had managed to return to its land suffered a third eviction. Land next to the Palestinian village of Susya was confiscated from the village of Yatta, from which a dozen local families had been expelled to make way on the pretext of archeological digs, according to one source. A major expansion of the new settlement began on 18 September 1999, when its boundaries expanded northwards and eastwards, with the Palestinian Shreiteh family allegedly losing roughly 150 more dunams.

The Palestinians that remain in the area live in tents on a small rocky hill between the settlement and the archeological park which is located within walking distance. According to Amnesty International, ten caves inhabited by Susya Palestinian families were blown up by the IDF in 1996, and some 113 tents were destroyed in 1998. Amnesty International also reports that official documents asking them to leave the area address them generically as 'intruders' (polesh/intruder). Most of the rain-catching water cisterns used by the local Palestinian farmers of Susya were demolished by the Israeli army in 1999 and 2001. A local Susya resident told Amnesty International,

'Water is life ; without water we can’t live; not us, not the animals, or the plants. Before we had some water, but after the army destroyed everything we have to bring water from far away ; it’s very difficult and expensive. They make our life very difficult, to make us leave.'

On the 7th of June 1991 a settler from the Israeli settlement of Susya shot dead a local Palestinian shepherd, under circumstances that were never clarified. On the 23th of March, 1993, Musa Suliman Abu Sabha a Palestinian was arrested outside Susiya by two guards, Moshe Deutsch and Yair Har-Sinai, either on suspicion he had stolen 60 sheep from the latter's flock, or because they suspected he was planning an attack Jews. Taken for questioning, he stabbed in the shoulder or back one of the guards, Moshe Deutsch, while the two were in a car, and, wrestled to the ground, was bound hand and foot. Another settler from nearby Maal Hever, Yoram Shkolnik shot him eight times, killing him. According to the IDF he was found bearing a grenade. Reports differ as to whether he still had the grenade when bound, or whether it had been taken from him after his arrest. In 2001, Yair Har-Sinai was killed in a brawl with local Palestinians. A Palestinian, Jihad Najar, was convicted of murder and received a sentence of life imprisonment. The IDF then evicted the 300 Palestinians in the area, demolishing some of their makeshift homes. They have sought redress in an Israeli court. Jewish residents of Susya have harassed local Palestinians, destroyed their property, and hindered them from gathering their crops from olive groves. In 2009 Yaakov Teitel, was indicted for the 2007 murder of a Palestinian shepherd from Susya.

While the Israeli settlement has mains power and piped water from Israel, the Palestinians depend on solar panels and wind turbine energy made possible by a Palestinian/Israeli NGO – Comet - and on wells. This project has been shortlisted for the BBC World Challenge which highlighted the involvement of two Israeli physicists, Elad Orian and Noam Dotan. According to David Hirst, the inhabitants of al-Amniyr, at-Tuwani and the other villages that comprise Susiya, are faced with a catch-22. If they comply with the law they cannot build cisterns and collect even the rainwater. But if they fail to work their lands, they lose it anyway.