NIF grantee B’Tselem – The Israel Information Center for Human Rights has posted a video of Israeli military bulldozers demolishing an elementary school building in the Masafer Yatta region in the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank. The demolition of the school, which has 23 pupils and three teachers, is part of a state effort to drive Palestinians out of the area by making their lives unbearable. In the video, the small children who attend the school are seen crying over the imminent loss of their building. Many refer to the ongoing events in this region as “creeping annexation.”
Earlier this year, the Israeli army began live fire exercises in the region, following a ruling by Israel’s High Court of Justice allowing the use of the area as a firing zone. The exercises were the first in the area for over 20 years and they are part of the tactics of intimidation to force the local Palestinian population to move ‘out of their own free will.’ A bullet has already struck one of the houses in a nearby Palestinian village.