Firing Zone 918 (Hebrew: שטח אש 918) is an Israeli-declared military training area in the South Hebron Hills of the Israeli-Occupied West Bank, overlapping much of Masafer Yatta. The area was designated as a closed military zone in the 1980s and encompasses a cluster of Palestinian cave-dwelling and herding communities that have faced eviction orders, demolitions, and movement restrictions. [1] In May 2022, the Supreme Court of Israel (consolidated HCJ 413/13) ruled that training needs permitted evacuation of residents from parts of Masafer Yatta, drawing criticism from UN experts and human-rights groups. [2] [3]
Firing Zone 918 lies south-east of the city of Yatta. UN OCHA situates it within a wider regime of Israeli firing zones covering about 20% of the West Bank (nearly 30% of Area C), affecting dozens of communities. [1] Maps by B’Tselem place the zone and nearby Israeli settlements/outposts relative to Palestinian hamlets. [4]
Civil-society and humanitarian sources commonly list twelve Palestinian hamlets within or adjacent to the zone. An ACRI brief identifies: Jinba, al-Mirkez, al-Halawe, Khallet a-Dab‘a, al-Fakhit, at-Tabban, al-Majaz, a-Sfai/Sfay (upper/lower), Maghayir al-‘Abeed, al-Mufaqara, a-Tuba, and Sarura (depopulated). [5] OCHA (2022) estimated about 1,150 residents (569 children) at risk in these localities and notes that Sarura and Kharruba ceased to exist following demolitions. [1]
In 1999, Israeli authorities issued eviction orders to roughly 700 Palestinian residents for “illegally living in a firing zone”; most were removed and later allowed back under an interim High Court injunction in 2000 pending a final ruling. [5] [1] In 2020, the Akevot Institute publicized a 1981 government meeting transcript in which then–Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon urged creating training zones in the South Hebron Hills to restrict “expansion of the Arab villagers,” a document later cited in litigation and public debate about the zone's intent. [6]
Scholars criticized the ruling as eroding legal protections for occupied populations and enabling forcible transfer contrary to international humanitarian law. [7] [3]
UN OCHA documents a longstanding “coercive environment”: repeated demolitions and stop-work orders (including of donor-funded structures), restrictions on service connections, impediments to humanitarian access, and heightened movement constraints during training. [1] Reports also note recurrent settler violence affecting communities in and around the zone. [1] [8]
Critics argue the zone's function aligns less with training needs than with territorial control and depopulation. The Akevot-published 1981 transcript has been cited as evidence that training areas were proposed as tools to curtail Palestinian “expansion” in the South Hebron Hills. [6] UN OCHA and ACRI describe how the combination of planning restrictions, demolitions, and denied services fosters conditions that pressure residents to leave—what OCHA terms a “coercive environment.” [1] [5]
Post-colonial and settler-colonial scholarship has analyzed firing zones and planning regimes as spatial instruments of domination. Architect and theorist Eyal Weizman argues that “mundane” planning tools (zoning, roads, quarrying, security perimeters) operate as tactical means of dispossession in the West Bank's “architecture of occupation”. [9] [10] Political geographer Oren Yiftachel characterizes Israel/Palestine as an ethnocracy undergoing “creeping apartheid”, in which legal and spatial mechanisms increasingly confine Palestinians while consolidating hegemonic control—analyses invoked by commentators discussing Firing Zone 918 as part of a broader matrix of rule. [11] [12]
Human-rights organizations contend that the zone's enforcement produces ethnic-cleansing by the systematic denial of residency and livelihoods through legal and physical pressure—while maintaining legal cover via military zoning. B’Tselem and partner groups describe a regime aimed at removing Palestinians from strategic areas; UN experts warned in 2022 that evictions in Masafer Yatta could amount to forcible transfer, prohibited by international law. [8] [3]
Research by Kerem Navot and Peace Now documents how shepherding outposts and state allocations have expanded a pastoral frontier over vast tracts of Area C—in their 2025 report, settlers are said to have cleared over ~14% of the West Bank using grazing enclaves—interacting with firing zones and restricted areas to reshape access to land. [13] [14] These patterns have been cited by critics to argue that firing zones, access closures and outposts together facilitate de facto annexation and population displacement. [15]
UN OCHA, OHCHR and legal scholars note that evacuations for military training in occupied territory must meet the narrow test of “imperative military reasons” and be temporary; they argue the protracted restrictions and eviction moves in Masafer Yatta fail this standard and risk unlawful forcible transfer. [1] [3] [7] The State position, reflected in court filings and the 2022 judgment, holds that most petitioners were not permanent residents at the time of designation and that the area is needed for training; petitioners and NGOs dispute both claims, citing historical residence and alternative sites for training. [2] [5]