Susya

Susya (Arabic: سوسية, Hebrew: סוּסְיָא; Susiyeh, Susiya, Susia) is a location in the southern Hebron Governorate in the West Bank. It houses an archaeological site with extensive remains from the Late Roman and Byzantine periods, including the ruins of an archeologically notable synagogue, repurposed as a mosque after the Muslim conquest of Palestine in the 7th century. A Palestinian village named Susya was established near the site in the 1830s. The village lands extended over 300 hectares under multiple private Palestinian ownership, and the Palestinians on the site are said to exemplify a southern Hebron cave-dwelling culture present in the area since the early 19th century whose transhumant practices involved seasonal dwellings in the area's caves and ruins of Susya. In 1982, an Israeli land authority, Plia Albeck, working in the Civil division of the State Attorney's Office, determined that the 300 hectares where Palestinians had been living, and which included an area with remains both of a 5th–8th century CE synagogue and of a mosque that had replaced it, were privately owned by the Palestinian Susya's villagers. In 1983, an Israeli settlement also named Susya was established next to the Palestinian village. In 1986, the Israeli Defense Ministry's Civil Administration declared the entire area owned by Palestinians an archeological site, and the Israeli Defense Forces expelled the Palestinian owners from their dwellings and appointed Israeli settlers from the recently built settlement to manage the site. Some of the expropriated Palestinian land was incorporated into the jurisdictional area of the Israeli settlement, and an illegal Israeli outpost was established on the area of the previous Palestinian village. The expelled Palestinians moved a few hundred meters southeast of their original village. The Israeli government, which has issued injunctions against the Israeli Supreme Court's decisions to demolish illegal Israeli outposts, made a...