On Tuesday, 3 Jan. 2023, at around 10:00 A.M., Civil Administration personnel came with a military and Border Police escort and two crawler diggers to the village of Khirbet Ma’in, which lies southeast of the town of Yatta in the Hebron District. The forces demolished a home under construction intended for a family of six, four of them minors, and a completed water hole already in use under it. As they withdrew, the forces hurled a stun grenade at young men who gathered by the demolished home. When they reached the village center, young men threw stones at them, and the forces fired at least six tear gas canisters at the men.
The forces then went to the village of She’b al-Battem in the South Hebron Hills, where they demolished the homes of four families and an outhouse, leaving 36 people, 12 of them minors, homeless. They also destroyed four water tanks with a metal base belonging to the four families, and six smaller water tanks belonging to two of them.
Some of the forces then went on in a jeep to the community of Khirbet a-Safai al-Foqa, which lies in Masafer Yatta within the area the military designated “Firing Zone 918”, and confiscated a folded tent. The tent, which teachers put up and took down daily to use as a classroom, was donated by the Red Crescent after Israel demolished the community school on 23 Nov. 2022 and confiscated tents donated to serve as classrooms on 6 Dec. 2022.
