According to the petition, the IDF must allow Palestinian Arabs illegally residing on the land to return to it and to secure the area for their use.

The Supreme Court accepted a petition filed by Palestinian Authority Arabs who had illegally squatted at the archaeological site of Khirbet Zanuta, demanding that the IDF allow and secure their return to the site.

The Supreme Court also accepted the claim of the squatters that they were threatened by settlers in the area, although no evidence was presented to that effect.

According to the judges, the State is obligated to assist the squatters to return. Justice Daphne Barak-Erez even demanded of the State’s representative “more effective measures against the settlers to maintain public order.”

The archaeological site of Khirbet Zanuta is located in the southern Hebron Hills, near the settlement of Shim’a in Area C, which is under full Israeli control. In the early 2000s, Arabs from the village of Dura and the surrounding area illegally invaded the site and built numerous structures there, destroying the antiquities found there, which date to the Roman period.

Concurrently, a petition was filed this month by the Regavim movement against the return of the Palestinian Arab squatters to the site, in which it was written that alongside the claim that the residents of the area feel threatened, “the Palestinians’ petition ignores the fact that they lived there illegally and under the auspices of a freeze order that the Supreme Court issued a decade ago. They were not evicted and took advantage of the situation to continue developing and expanding the outpost among the ruins of the heritage site.”

Meir Deutsch, Regavim CEO, said that “adopting the false narrative of ‘settler violence’ without presenting a shred of evidence is serious and constitutes a dangerous precedent. Not only did the invaders of Khirbet Zanuta gain a full decade of non-enforcement of the building code – taking advantage of the ‘get out of jail free’ card that the Supreme Court had given them and the wink-and-nod of the state authorities, now, the state adds insult to injury and instead of restoring the site and preserving it, it allows the lawbreakers to return to the site and resume their invasion and destruction of the site.”

“The law enforcement agencies should investigate and probe the allegations of violence in Khirbet Zanuta, and if indeed there is any truth to them, the perpetrators should be brought to justice.”

The Coalition of Organizations for Preservation of Heritage Sites in Judea and Samaria stated, “In a hearing held in the Supreme Court regarding the request of the squatters of Khirbet Zanuta to return to the archaeological site, we clarified our position that it is impossible to make a pig’s trough kosher and allow the residents to return and continue the destruction of antiquities. The very fact of a discussion that deals with the return of plunderers and marauders to an archaeological site under the auspices and approval of the state is an injustice without parallel, and we hope that a decision will be taken that takes into account the historical significance of the site and that justice will be done to history.”

Eliram Azulay, head of the Mount Hebron Regional Council, summed up: “I very much hope that the state and the Supreme Court justices will come to their senses and make it clear that this is an incursion into a significant archaeological site and not allow the infiltrators to return. We as a council will continue to act to preserve the entire Mount Hebron area.”