It’s 2019, and we’re in a village in Masafer Yatta, in the West Bank. Its records go back 200 years, but the Israeli Supreme Court has declared it a military zone, and its people squatters. We watch the first demolition. A dozen or so women try to clear the rooms of possessions while a contractor’s bulldozer moves in to smash down the walls. Others plead and argue with the soldiers, appealing to their humanity, but that’s not something they share with Palestinians. That evening the family are living in a cave, with electricity from a generator.
After the next demolition, the family start to rebuild their home at night. But the army and the bulldozers soon return, knock it down and seize building materials and tools. A villager hanging on to a generator is shot. Paralysed from the neck down, he spends the rest of his short life lying motionless in a cave.
