It houses an archaeological site with extensive remains from the Second Temple and Byzantine periods,[1] including the ruins of an archeologically notable synagogue, repurposed as a mosque after the Muslim conquest of Palestine in the 7th century.

The state expressed a willingness to allocate what it called "Israeli government-owned lands" near Yatta for an alternative residence, and to assist rebuilding, considering it ideal for the displaced villagers grazing.

[26][27][28] Part of Negev's theory is that, in the wake of the Second Revolt (132–135), when the Romans garrisoned Khirbet el-Karmil, identified as the biblical Carmel, religious Jews uncomfortable with pagan symbols moved 2 km south-west to the present Susya (which they perhaps already farmed) and that, while they still regarded their new community as Carmel, the name was lost when the village's fortunes declined in the early Arab period, in part, it has been suggested, because the new Muslim overlords might not have tolerated its wine-based economy.

He, together with Ze'ev Yeivin and Ehud Netzer, then conducted the Israeli excavations at Khirbet Suseya, (subsequently named by a Hebrew calque as Horvat Susya) over 1971–72,[30][31][32] by the Palestinian village of Susiya Al-Qadime.

[37] According to David Amit, the architectural design, particularly the eastern entrance and axis of prayer, which differ from the majority of Galilean synagogues, exhibits the ramifications of the earliest halakhic law conserved in southern Judea for generations after the destruction of the Temple.

[43] The synagogue floor of white tesserae has three mosaic panels, the eastern one a Torah Shrine, two menorahs, one on a screen relief showing two lamps[44] suspended from a bar between the menorah's upper branches,[45] (possibly because the Torah shrine was flanked by lampstands, serving the dual purpose of symbolizing a connection between the synagogue and the Temple[46] while functioning as a spotlight for the bimah and giving light for scriptural readings).

Zodiac mosaics are important witness to the time, since they were systematically suppressed by the Church, and, their frequent construction in Palestinian synagogue floors may be an index of 'the "inculturation" of non-Jewish imagery and its resulting Judaization'.

[48] The fragmentary state of the wheel mosaic is due to its replacement by a much cruder geometric pavement pattern, indicative of a desire to erase what later came to be thought of as objectionable imagery.

The figure, in an orans stance, flanked by lions, was scrubbed from the mosaics in line with later trends, in what Fine calls a "new aesthetic" at Khirbet Susiya, one that refurbished the designs to suppress iconographic forms thought by later generations to be objectionable.

[9] Magness, assessing the evidence uncovered by the several archaeologists who dug at the site, which includes an inscription, dates the mosque to the reign of Caliph Al-Walid I, in the early eighth century.

[64] In the 12th–13th centuries, Crusader troops were garrisoned at nearby Chermala (Khirbet al-Karmil) and, in their wake, a few families[clarification needed] moved into the ruins to exploit the rich agricultural land.

[62] In his book The Land of Israel: A Journal of travel in Palestine, Henry Baker Tristram wrote "We rode rapidly on through Susieh, a town of ruins, on a grassy slope, quite as large as the others, and with an old basilica, but less troglodyte than Attir.

"[13][86] According to Regavim, an NGO which petitioned the Supreme Court to execute the demolition orders at Khirbet susya,[87] the place was used as grazing area and olive agricalture seasonally before 1986.

[95] According to David Shulman, the second expulsion took place in 1990, when Rujum al-Hamri's inhabitants were loaded onto trucks by the IDF and dumped at the Zif Junction, 15 kilometers northwards[76] a roadside at the edge of a desert.

[10][76] On 3 July 2001, the Israeli army demolished dozens of homes in Susya and contiguous Palestinian villages, and bulldozed their cisterns, many ancient, built for gathering rainwater, and then filling them with gravel and cement to hinder their reuse.

[citation needed] At around 11 pm on the 22 July 2007 Ezra Nawi caught sight of settlers laying irrigation pipes on another slice of Palestinian land.

He called the Israeli police at Kiryat Arba to put an end to the usurpation, and, a few minutes later, dozens of settlers came, threw rocks at his car and threatened to kill him.

[100] In September 2008 the Israeli army informed the Palestinians at Susya that a further 150 dunums (15 hectares), where 13 remaining rainwater cisterns are located, would be a "closed military area" to which they were denied access.

They have a swimming pool and their lush irrigated vineyards, herb farms and lawns – verdant even at the height of the dry season – stand in stark contrast to the parched and arid Palestinian villages on their doorstep.

[102] Shulman described the reality he observed in 2008: Susya: where thirteen impoverished families are clinging tenaciously, but probably hopelessly, to the dry hilltop and the few fields that are all that remain of their vast ancestral lands.

[99]While the Israeli settlement has mains power and piped water from Israel, the Palestinians depend on solar panels and wind turbine energy made possible by a Palestinian/Israeli NGO – Comet - and on wells.

[111] Of the 120 complaints registered with Israeli police in Hebron by Palestinians of Susya, regarding alleged attacks, threats, incursions, and property damage wrought by settlers down to 2013, upwards of 95% have been dismissed, without charges being laid.

[118] On 14 June an Israeli court issued 6 demolition orders covering 50 buildings including tent dwellings, ramshackle huts, sheep pens, latrines, water cisterns, a wind-and-sun powered turbine, and the German-funded solar panels in most of the Palestinian village of Susya.

[75] On 26 June 2013, the Israeli Civil Administration, raided Palestinian Susya and handed out 40 demolition orders for many structures, tents, hothouses, a water well and a solar panel, established on humanitarian grounds by the European Union.

On 29 August 2012 the IDF destroyed a sheepfold and two tents, one a dwelling and the other for storage, donated to the villagers of Palestinian Susya by the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

[121] A delegation of diplomats from 28 European countries visited Susya in June and urged Israel not to evict its 300 Palestinian residents, a move that would endanger in their view the two-state solution.

[127][128] A major expansion began on 18 September 1999, when its boundaries expanded northwards and eastwards, with the Palestinian Shreiteh family allegedly losing roughly 150 more dunams.

According to the Palestinian eyewitnesses, Jabar Hawad al-Nawajah was told not to graze near the settlement, and then Yellin rode off, returned with a M-16 rifle and shot a dozen of his sheep.

[133] On 23 March 1993, Musa Suliman Abu Sabha[134] a Palestinian was arrested outside Susya by two guards, Moshe Deutsch and Yair Har-Sinai, on suspicion that he was planning an attack on Jews.

They have sought redress in an Israeli court, which ruled that illegal demolitions had taken place, the state had failed to provide procedures to enable the plaintiffs to obtain building permits, and was creating a situation in which elementary human rights to life were being denied.