Israel's Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to allow the State to evict 251 Palestinian Authority Arabs from Masafer Yatta, an IDF firing zone in the Southern Hebron Hills.
The Arabs had infiltrated the area illegally several years ago. .
Firing zone 918 was declared a firing zone in 1980, and served in the first few decades as a place where the IDF held training sessions, including for the Air Force.
Justices David Mintz, Isaac Amit, Uzi Vogelman, and Ofer Grosskopf, ruled unilaterally that the Arabs infiltrated the area illegally after it was declared a training zone, and showed how the Arabs' claims of having lived there for decades were completely false.
"Alongside the aforementioned acts of enforcement to remove the permanent buildings from the firing zone, negotiations were held between the local actors and the military authorities regarding presence at the scene for the purposes of agriculture and shepherding, but not for permanent residences. In the end, a compromise agreement was reached with some of those who remained in the area, under which the entrance of farmers and shepherds was allowed during times that trainings were not held, mostly on weekends and Israeli holidays."
The current appeal to the Supreme Court was filed in 2013. In it, the Arabs claimed, via their lawyers from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, that they have lived on the land for 45 years already - since before it was declared a firing zone. The Israeli government refuted their claim, insisting that the Arabs only infiltrated the area after it was already declared a firing zone.
Mintz noted in the ruling that "this is not a complex question of facts, but rather a question for which the resolution, especially for the appeals in front of us, is not complicated at all."
According to him, the satellite images presented by both sides show a clear and unambiguous picture.
The court was presented with dozens of satellite images from different years. Regarding this, Mintz wrote, "This is a significant collection of satellite images which reveals the situation of things in a clear and unambiguous fashion. While until the year 1980, no signs of residences can be seen in the area, certainly no permanent buildings are in the entire area, it is clear from the images a push to build during the 90s, and especially beginning from the year 2000 and on."
He added that even from the satellite images submitted by the Arabs, this trend is clear.