On the morning of Thursday, 31 January 2019, at around 8:00
A.M., Israeli Civil Administration personnel came with a Border Police
escort to the region of Masafer Yatta (Greater Yatta) in the South
Hebron Hills. They brought a bulldozer and a tractor which they used to
dig a deep trench across the road that connects the community of Sh’ab
al-Botum with the rest of the Masafer Yatta communities. The Israeli
military had already torn up the road a year earlier, in late 2017, and
the residents then repaved it. These travel restrictions are but another
step in a long saga of harassment by the authorities against the local
residents, adopted in an effort to drive them out of their homes and the
area.