CPTnet
5 May 2009
SOUTH HEBRON HILLS:  Palestinians and Israelis gather in Susya to celebrate solar and wind power installation, protest Susiya Settlement expansion


Over one hundred Israeli and Palestinian members of Combatants for Peace (http://www.combatantsforpeace.org/) gathered peacefully in the Palestinian village of Susya on 2 May 2009 to mark the installation in the village of solar panels and a wind turbine, which will provide electricity to the Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills.

After viewing the panels and turbine and listening to leaders of the nonviolent resistance in the South Hebron Hills, the group walked towards a house that settlers from the nearby Susiya settlement had built on Palestinian land.  Soldiers met the group and read aloud an order declaring the area closed.  The group then returned to the village and remained for two hours, talking and learning about the effects of the occupation on the area.

The original village of Susya was established in the 1830s when Palestinians from the South Hebron region purchased the land.  Israeli settlers established the settlement of Susiya in l983, and in l986, the Israeli military evicted the villagers from their original cave homes.  Some of the families returned to their land but lived in homes scattered over several hilltops.

In the l990s, the military established a military base about two km away, and under this military protection, Israeli settlers were able to expand onto more of the land that originally belonged to the village of Susya.
Settlers became increasingly violent, and stopped Palestinian farmers from cultivating their land, regularly attacking them.  During the l990s, three Palestinians were murdered.  In 2001, after the murder of a settler, the Israeli army forcibly evicted the entire village, using heavy machinery to destroy the cave homes and more than one thousand olive trees.  The military also blocked up the wells with sand and rocks, buried livestock alive in their pens, and destroyed agricultural fields.  Despite this forcible removal, many villagers again returned to their land.  Since that time the village has waged a legal battle in the Israeli courts for the right to exist.