From the farmers of the South Hebron Hills under attack by settlers to the armed groups of Jenin Camp facing nightly raids, a new wave of West Bank resistance is building.
By David Hearst | Middle East Eye | Oct 10, 2022
“They are trying to present to the world that we are terrorists. Who are the terrorists? We are trying to stay in our homes.”
— Asharaf Mahmoud Amour, Letwani villager whose house was demolished
The village of Letwani is the end of the road. Literally. Behind it lies a settler road which starts in Jerusalem and ends in the South Hebron Hills.
In front of it is the Masafer Yatta, an area of 30 square kilometres which Israel declared as a military firing zone in the 1980s.
Masafer Atta’s 2,500 residents are involved in daily pitched battles with settlers and soldiers.
The morning I arrived in Letwani, Asharaf Mahmoud Amour, aged 40, looked calmly at a pile of breeze blocks. It was the remains of his house. A bulldozer had demolished it a few hours before. To his amazement, the soldiers had left standing the shed to the left and the chicken house to the right, both under demolition orders.
“I will tell you where we are sleeping tonight – with the chickens and the goats,” Amour said.
“All they want is to make us leave. Destroying the houses, blocking us from fields, terrifying us all the time with the soldiers and settlers around, invading the houses, arresting us. And we know that what they want from this is to push us out. This is the challenge we accept,” the father of five children said.
“They are trying to present to the world that we are terrorists. Who are the terrorists? We are trying to stay in our homes. They are the ones who are terrorizing us. I will stay here even if I have to sleep under a stone.”
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