Israeli Forces Demolish 24 Homes in Janba, Displace 176 in Masafer Yatta

Military bulldozers reached Janba, a village in Masafer Yatta south of Hebron, early Wednesday morning. By the time soldiers left, 24 residential structures were gone, along with 16 agricultural buildings, 16 solar panels and 14 water tanks, according to the Israeli rights group B'Tselem.

Around 176 people were displaced, including 85 children.

"We lost our home; we lost three rooms – the kitchen, the sheep shed and the bread oven," Najah Jabarin told Middle East Eye. Her family of 11, she said, has nowhere else to live. She intends to rebuild and stay.

Nu'man Jabarin, born in Janba in 1969, lived in the same cave his parents and grandparents had used before him. Soldiers sealed it along with other caves residents relied on to store food and clothing and shelter livestock.

"Today, they wiped out everything I owned," he told MEE. "I have no bathroom, no kitchen, no room and no cave left." He said his two-month-old grandson has been sleeping in the open since the demolition. When he tried to show soldiers ownership documents as bulldozers moved in, he said he was told the area was a "closed military zone."

"They don't care about Palestinians anywhere," he said. "They want to displace us to Jordan, but I will not leave. I will die with my children in my village."

A pattern, not an incident

Janba is the third community in Masafer Yatta hit by mass demolition since early September. On 2 September, Israeli forces demolished nearly all of Khirbet al-Taban, including 12 homes sheltering roughly 70 people, 28 of them children. A week later, all five homes in Khirbet al-Fakhit were razed, displacing 32 people along with livestock pens and solar infrastructure.

The legal cover for the campaign dates to the 1980s, when Israel designated much of Masafer Yatta as "Firing Zone 918" for military training. About 1,200 Palestinians live across its 13 communities, according to UN OCHA figures. In May 2022, Israel's Supreme Court upheld the military's position on the zone, clearing the way for demolitions to proceed. B'Tselem says forces and settlers have since violently expelled more than 4,800 Palestinians from the area, and residents say the pace has surged since October 2023.

Nasr Nawajaa, a human rights activist based in Masafer Yatta, called the Janba demolitions part of an "ethnic cleansing" campaign and said the timing, weeks before Israel's 27 October election, was not coincidental.

"The village is being subjected to ethnic cleansing" — Nasr Nawajaa, activist based in Masafer Yatta

Another Janba resident, Nidal Jabarin, said the demolitions were meant to make life unbearable and force residents out, and accused Israeli political parties of competing to show "fascism, barbarism, savagery and racism" toward Palestinians ahead of the vote. That characterization is his own assessment, not an established finding, but it is consistent with residents' repeated descriptions of demolitions clustering around Israeli election cycles.