Khirbet Susiya, occupied West Bank – Heyam Nawajah never knows what to tell her daughter when she asks why they don’t have a home.
“My daughter keeps asking: ‘Why don’t we have a house? Why can’t we build a house? Why can’t I have my own room?’” the Palestinian Bedouin mother of six said.
According to the 31-year-old Heyam, the Nawajahs have lived in Khirbet Susiya since the early 19th century.
Khirbet Susiya, like the other Palestinian Bedouin villages located south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, is home to small groups of families organised into kinship networks that make a living tending their olive trees and their herds of sheep.
While other villages south of Hebron – known collectively as Masafer Yatta – are located in what Israel labels “Firing Zone 918”, which it has used to justify the destruction of permanent structures and the expulsion of residents living in the villages, Khirbet Susiya’s history follows a series of complex legal mandates by the Israeli government, all of which have been used to justify the same destruction and expulsion.
According to Heyam, her four daughters and two sons have lived their whole lives with the threat that, one day, their home may be demolished.