Destruction and ethnic cleansing of Khalet al-Dabaa

On On Monday, 5 May 2025, in the morning hours, Civil Administration personnel, escorted by Border Police officers and soldiers and equipped with an excavator and bulldozer, arrived in the community of Khirbet Khalet a-Dabe’ in the South Hebron Hills. The forces demolished ten homes, leaving 49 people, including 27 minors, without shelter.

• Additionally, the forces demolished 11 sanitation structures, two kitchen structures, 11 water tanks, five water cisterns, three structures used as sheep pens (including a cave), a hospitality hall, an electricity room, a solar power network and water infrastructure.

• The community was left with the school building and four residential homes that are still under legal proceedings. Families whose homes were demolished received tents from a humanitarian organization and remained in the community area.

Context:

Khirbet Khalet a-Dabe’ is one of the communities in the Masafer Yatta region of the South Hebron Hills, which Israel declared a “closed military zone” in the early 1980s, with the aim of seizing the area and expelling its residents.

Since then, the state has prohibited the development of the communities—many of which predate the occupation of the West Bank—prevented their connection to water and electricity infrastructure, and repeatedly demolished their homes, any infrastructure they tried to build, and even the roads leading to the communities.

In recent years, the communities have also suffered repeated settler attacks, often with army assistance, which also allows settlers to establish outposts within the declared “firing zone” adjacent to them.

Testimony of Mohammad_Hesham_Huraini @MHureini

"Today 5 May 2025 in just 2.5 hours Israeli occupation forces destroyed nearly the entire Palestinian village of Khalet Al-dabaa in the South Hebron Hills, part of my community Masafer Yatta.

In the short window of 9:00 to 11:30 AM :

• They demolished 9 homes, 6 caves, 10 water tanks, 4 animal barns, 11 toilet rooms, 7 water wells, 400 meters of agricultural fencing, the community center, the electricity room, all solar panels, internet systems, and security cameras. Only 2 or 3 houses remain standing.

• Shrieks of horror can be heard as the sounds compete: the metallic noise of bending steal and crushed cement, as the people who have lived in this village for centuries are forced to look on without recourse, solution or consolation.

• Families were uprooted and left with nothing: no shelter, no water, no power, no means to survive. This is not just demolition it is another deliberate act of ethnic cleansing in Masafer Yatta, unfolding in daylight and met with silence."