Eight villages in a rural area of the occupied West Bank will soon be demolished, forcing about 1,000 Palestinians to seek shelter elsewhere after Israel's Supreme Court rejected a petition to prevent their eviction.
The court's ruling late Wednesday regarding the location near Hebron -- called Masafer Yatta by Palestinians and South Hebron Hills by Israelis -- is the culmination of a legal battle spanning two decades over the future of the area Israel designated for military exercises.
The court ruled that when Israel's military declared the 7,400-acre area a firing zone in the 1980s, Palestinians living on the land were not permanent residents at the time.
The ruling came just ahead of Israel's Independence Day on Thursday.
Although expert testimony and literature presented before the court appeared to demonstrate a Palestinian presence in the area for decades, the court sided with the state, which argued the community could not prove they inhabited Firing Zone 918 in Masafer Yatta prior to the 1980s.
The expulsion is reportedly one of the single-largest decisions since Israel began occupying Palestinian territories during the 1967 war.
