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Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/masafer-yatta-fact-and-fiction/
Masafer Yatta: Fact and Fiction
(JNS) Naomi Kahn - The Masafer Yatta case illustrates how anti-Israel organizations, foreign governments and the Palestinian Authority have turned a run-of-the-mill case of illegal construction into a massive international issue. Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank is state land, which was declared a military training ground in the early 1980s. There has not been settlement of any kind on the land in over 100 years. This is a desert area, very difficult terrain, with no water and not arable. British Mandate-era maps show no settlement of any kind. Aerial photos from as recently as 1997 make this point unequivocally. A recent Israel High Court decision holds that the residents of the illegal "villages" of Masafer Yatta arrived after the IDF closed off the area. It also holds that these residents, almost without exception, have permanent homes in the nearby town of Yatta. Yet two decades passed before the High Court finally asserted that Arab claims to this land are unfounded, and the claim that Israel is dispossessing indigenous people is a lie. The writer is director of the International Division of Regavim, an Israeli movement dedicated to the protection of Israel's land resources.