Khashm al-Karm School by Awdah Alhathaleen

Like other villages in Masafer Yatta, Khashm al-Karm suffers from inhumane living conditions under the Israeli occupation and its settlers. They harass the residents in every way to force them to leave their lands for the rapid looting of the settlement, which is devouring the land little by little.

The simplest rights that all villages should have, such as education, have become a faraway dream, now fraught with dangers inside tents that do not protect students from the cold of winter or the heat of summer. But it’s still better than traveling long distances in a desert area isolated from its surroundings, to where there is no transportation to or from.

About a month ago, the people of the village resorted to building classrooms, and when the work was nearing completion, the occupation forces surprised them with the decision to demolish the school, claiming that it was located in a “shooting” area. 46 students, 34 of whom are between first and fourth grades, and 12 in the preparatory stage, are now out in the open, according to the school principal, Muhammad Abu Malsh.

He says that the worst case scenario, which is the demolition of the school, will place great obstacles between these students and their education, as they will have to walk long distances in the summer heat and the winter cold in order to reach the nearest school to them, which is three kilometers away, This worst case scenario just became reality: the school received a final decision, and will now be destroyed within ten days.

According to the head of one of the village councils, Ibrahim al-Hathlin, this suffering in obtaining education is a small part of the suffering of the villagers, which reflects the suffering of seven Bedouin communities and twelve villages located in Masafer Yatta in the south of the West Bank, inhabited by about 8,000 Palestinian citizens.

Khashm al-Karm extends over large areas between the southeast and southwest of the West Bank, adjacent to the lands occupied in 48 AD, and it has a strategic location for the occupation, which is why they take many measures to restrict the lives of the residents in order to push them off their lands. Forty Bedouin families live in Khashm al-Karm, who are deprived of all forms of services, as there are no paved roads, no markets. The only mosque and school in the village both were handed demolition notices from the occupation forces.

The occupation judiciary rejects the villagers’ petition against the removal of the mosque, confirming the final removal decision, which means that it will be demolished at any moment.

Al-Hathlin points out that the occupation is putting a lot of pressure on the village, trying to displace its people and break their steadfastness through several methods, including the confiscation of land under military pretexts.

He added, "The occupation has seized thousands of dunums under the pretext that they are state lands, in addition to other lands that it granted for pastoral settlement, as settlers establish settlement outposts through which they place their hands on vast areas of land to care for their livestock."

He continues: "It is well known that the citizens of our region depend on grazing for their lives. They came to compete with them for their livelihood, and they prevented us from grazing sheep in the mountains surrounding the village, and they set up barracks for the settlers."

Even the houses were not spared from demolition, because the occupation never gives the citizens of the village building permits (since they are located in Area C), and then comes to demolish their homes on the pretext of not having a permit. “Most of the houses in the village have demolition notices, which means that their residents may be doomed.” into the open at any moment, as this matter represents a bleeding wound for the people of the region.” said Al-Hathlin. He added that if not giving building permits wasn’t enough, they also aren’t allowed to renovate or restore already existing buildings.

The occupation deliberately built an army camp in the south of the village, which now controls the daily movement of citizens, and they are subjected to search and arrest while passing through it.

The village's 400 residents depend on the markets and facilities in Yatta and Hebron to manage their lives, but the distance between them is long and it takes time to reach them, and drivers avoid the risk of coming to our areas.

Al-Hathlin points out that, in addition to that, there is an Israeli organization called Regavim that carries out aerial photography daily to monitor the movements of the villagers, and writes daily reports for the occupation army of any developments on the land of Khashem al-Karm, so that no citizen can build or change anything in his house.

Furthermore, the so-called "Israeli Nature Protection Authority”, whose work is supposed to be in the occupied interior, takes over a lot of forests and puts a fence in the area, and allows only settlers to graze their livestock in it, and any Palestinian caught in the place is exorbitantly fined and livestock are confiscated, al-Hathlin explains.

Al-Hathlin finishes by emphasizing how widespread the threat of demolition is: "In addition to the aggressive nature of the settlers, their oppression of the citizens, and the exorbitant violations of the occupation army and their storming of homes, almost all the houses here receive their owners notices of demolition.

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