HEBRON, Wednesday, May 26, 2021 (WAFA) – Israeli settlers attacked, on Wednesday morning, Palestinian shepherds and stormed their houses in Khirbet Zanuta village, southwest of Hebron city, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank.
Local sources confirmed that a group of settlers forced their way into the village, which forms a part of ath-Thaheriyya town, physically assaulted shepherds, and broke into houses in order to terrorize and expel them out of the area to seize their land for colonial settlement expansion. No casualties were reported.
The village has been a target for Israeli forces and settler attacks, including discharging untreated wastewater into the villagers’ lands, demolishing the village school, leveling farmlands, halting construction of water wells, tearing down the villagers’ dwellings and sole clinic, and restricting the villagers’ access to the village through shutting down the main road leading to it.
The village has a total population of some 150, comprising some 30 families, who depend on agriculture, livestock rearing, and dairy production for their livelihoods.
Local farmers are the most affected by the Israeli occupation’s practices. Owing to its adjacency to the Green Line, the village has suffered considerably from occupation, particularly due to the construction of the segregation wall. About 200 dunums of village lands were confiscated during the Second Intifada.
The village is surrounded by Israeli colonial settlements of Shima and Tene to the west, and a bypass road runs through the center of the village from west to east. Approximately six kilometers of the apartheid wall have been constructed on the village land since 2004. Five cisterns have been destroyed due to the construction of the wall.
