Published: 28 January 2022
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Yochai Damri, chair of the Mt Hebron Regional Council, tells Ben Lynfield: ‘Our job is to kindle light, put settlements here, live here and fulfil prophecies. Then God will do his part’
FOR MOST OF the international community, the south Hebron hills region of the West Bank is part of an occupied area to be included in a future Palestinian state, where the presence of Israeli settlers contravenes international law.
But Yochai Damri, 57, chairman of the Mount Hebron Regional Council, sees things differently. This softly spoken man, who was educated in the national religious Bnei Akiva Youth Movement, speaks for at least 10,000 constituents, advocating what many jurists would consider to be crimes against Palestinian civilians.
Damri says he wants many, if not most, of the estimated 14,000 Palestinians living in the Israeli-controlled part of the south Hebron hills to be expelled from their homes and thrown into prison.
He says this without embarrassment or fear of repercussions, given the enormous clout ideological settlers like him and their backers in the Israel Defense Forces and government wield in today's Israel.
In an interview with The Jewish Independent, Damri explained that he and other settlers are living the legacy of the Patriarch Abraham, and that it is God's will that they live in and develop the biblically resonant landscape.
They must not only have their homes demolished, but also be placed in prison. There are small communities that must be taken apart.
Many of the Palestinians in the south Hebron hills are, he asserts, outsiders trespassing on state or otherwise off-limits land. Thus, they must not only have their homes demolished, but also be placed in prison, he says.
"There are small communities that must be taken apart," he says.
