An Israeli anthropologist contradicts the High Court's claim that his study proved Palestinian villages didn't exist when the army declared a firing zone
An Israeli military “firing zone” warning sign near the West Bank village of Jinba, located in the South Hebron Hills, September 6, 2012
Yuval Abraham reports in +972 May 25, 2022
This article was published in partnership with Local Call.
Yaakov Havakook, an anthropologist and former member of Israel’s Defense Ministry, had no idea that a book he wrote 40 years ago had sealed the fate of over 1,000 Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank today.
In early May, Israel’s High Court ruled that the military could expel the residents of eight villages in Masafer Yatta, a small area located in the South Hebron Hills. The judges’ central justification was based on an ethnography written by Havakook, which, in the eyes of the state, proves that there were no “permanent dwellings” in Masafer Yatta in 1980, the year the Israeli military commander declared it a live firing zone for the purposes of IDF training. Based on this, the state argued, the army is right to expel the residents from the area.
Yet in a recent conversation I had with Havakook, the anthropologist himself contradicted the state’s account. When I first told him about how the court’s ruling was based, among other things, on his book, he knew nothing about it. More importantly, he called into question the state’s interpretation of his study and its use to justify the expulsions.
During the High Court hearing in April, the state argued that the maps Havakook used in his book had designated the Palestinian villages of Masafer Yatta as “seasonal settlements,” suggesting that the residents temporarily migrated there for only a few months in the year. Justice David Mintz himself referenced these particular pages when he accepted the state’s position and greenlit the expulsions.
Why is any of this relevant? Because according to Israeli military law, “live firing zones” do not apply to permanent residents. The state claimed that since Havakook wrote that the residents of Masafer Yatta do not live there year round, they can be expelled.
Havakook disagrees with this interpretation, particularly of his use of the term “seasonal settlements.” Two decades ago, he tried to submit an opinion to the High Court on behalf of the petitioners against the expulsions. But the Defense Ministry, where Havakook worked at the time, forbade him from submitting an affidavit as well as numerous photographs he had taken that clearly show the existence of the villages in the 1970s and ’80s. At the same time, the ministry used select quotes from his book to argue that the villages there were not permanent.
Furthermore, the justices did not refer at all to the countless testimonies by Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta, who describe their presence in these villages long before Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.
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