A day after his dwelling was razed by the military, along with those of his sons and over a dozen neighbors, Nabil Jabarin insisted that they would not leave their homes, even if they no longer had a roof over their heads.

Speaking by phone from Jinba, a small hamlet in the Masafer Yatta region of the southern West Bank that saw large-scale demolitions this week, Jabarin, 52, insisted that he would not leave, saying his family had lived in the village for generations and that they had no other place to go.

“They should look us in the eyes, look our children in the eyes, we have no other place to go to but here,” Jabarin said of those responsible for the demolitions.

On Wednesday, the Civil Administration, a Defense Ministry body in charge of enforcement against illegal structures in the West Bank, demolished 24 residential buildings in Jinba. Left homeless were some 180 people, including around 85 children, according to the B’Tselem human rights organization.

The administration also destroyed 15 agricultural buildings, 16 solar panels, 14 water tanks, and arrested one of the hamlet’s residents, the group said. According to Jabarin, some 40 structures remain standing.

The Civil Administration confirmed the demolitions in Jinba, saying that “enforcement was carried out against illegal building components” in the region.

Jinba, along with seven other hamlets in the area, lies inside a military firing zone and has long faced the prospect of demolition, but the residents insist that their dwelling existed long before the army delineated the area as off limits in the 1980s.

Jabarin’s ramshackle home was among those razed on Wednesday, along with those of his 30-year-old son, a father of six, and another son, 25, who has four children.

Jabarin told The Times of Israel that the families slept outside Wednesday night because of the demolitions, but that they hoped to organize tents to sleep in for Thursday night.

“All our lives are in Jinba, my father and grandfather were born in Jinba and died here, we have no........

© The Times of Israel