At the end of 2021, the last family remaining the community of Khirbet Bir al-‘Eid in Masafer Yatta, South Hebron Hills, after years of harassment by the Israeli authorities and settlers.
In 1999, the military expelled the residents of this community, who numbered some 200 people at the time, and of other communities in the Masafer Yatta area. Following a legal battle waged by the residents, they were permitted to return to their land, but the community suffered relentless harassment by the authorities and by settlers from two outposts established nearby: Nof Nesher (Havat Talya) to the south in 1996 and Mitzpe Yair” to the north in 1998. In 2003, the families were forced to leave again, after which the military blocked access to the site.
In 2009, following a petition to the High Court of Justice, the military allowed residents to return to the community, and some 300 family members returned, but settler and state harassment persisted. The campaign of harassment by settlers included blocking roads, threatening residents at gunpoint, sabotaging water pipes, assaulting shepherds and flocks, and breaking into homes. Beginning in 2010, families were forced out of the community one after another, until only about 45 people remained in the community, roughly half of them children.
In 2020–2021, B’Tselem documented four settler attacks, the last of which occurred in December 2021, when settlers blocked the road leading to the community. As a result, the last family left the area later that month.