About Masafer Yatta

Masafer Yatta / South Hebron Hills is a beautiful mountainous region dotted with over thirty ancient Palestinian villages, on the Southern edge of the West Bank. The villagers lead a farming lifestyle, mostly shepherding, with many living in old stone structures and caves.

The small hamlets appear on maps from before the establishment of Israel, yet the Israeli occupation doesn’t accept their existence and many of them were actively erased from Israeli maps.

The pressures put on communities by the occupation to leave their homes is immense. One central tactic used to cleanse communities and carry out this expulsion is Israel’s policy of systematic home demolitions. The Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank rejects more than 98% of Palestinian requests for building permits, while allowing settlers in the area to build freely. This colonial policy uses military law to force entire families in Masafer Yatta to leave their historical lands. Because their homes, schools, water wells, and roads are considered “illegal” by the army and marked for destruction, their mere existence, on their private land, is essentially made illegal.

No Other Land is the first documentary to shed light on the policy of forced expulsion through home demolitions. Settler and army violence, harassment and encroachment are another primary tool which makes life impossible and seeks to force communities to leave. This violence can sometimes receive international or local attention. We wanted to tell the story of how this violence is part of and connected to the larger system of ethnic cleansing that is also driven by the policy of home demolitions and permit refusal.