The Geneva Council of Rights and Freedoms described the Israeli decision to deport hundreds of Palestinians to the south of the West Bank, in preparation for the transfer of their land to Jews as "a stark example of Israel's policy of racial discrimination”.

The Supreme Court of Justice in Israel had ratified the resolution Wednesday, May 4, following a 20-year legal battle.

The decision meant the forcible transfer of 1,300 Palestinians from Masafer Yatta in Al-Khalil to other areas.

The area called the "918 firing zone" by the Israeli occupation authority straddles an area of 3,300 hectares near Hebron. Palestinian sheepherders and farmers live in 8 hamlets in that area.

“The expulsion of the land's inhabitants from their homes and the seizure and transfer of land to Jewish settlers amount to forced displacement”, the Geneva Council said in a statement on Friday, adding that “it was its amount to a war crime under the rules of international law”.

The Israeli occupation army had been attempting to displace Palestinians from Masafer Yatta for at least 40 years. It had declared those territories a "closed military zone" in the early 1980s.