In the cool of evening, the Palestinian villagers of Khirbet Susiya go about their business.

A beekeeper in a protective suit and veil moves among his hives with a smoke can. Others use the warm wind blowing from the nearby Negev desert to separate rough legumes from chaff. Shepherds move their animals across the low, rolling yellow hills while children run about the playground.

It appears a peaceful scene. Except that, for a third time in almost three decades, the few hundred villagers who live in crude temporary houses dotted about this area of the south Hebron hills of the occupied West Bank are under imminent threat of a new forced displacement.

Last month an Israeli high court judge ruled against the villagers’ injunction seeking to halt Israel’s planned destruction of Khirbet Susiya. Now the village has become the centre of a growing international campaign over its future which has drawn in European diplomats and human rights campaigners.

Khirbet Susiya is home to between 250 and 350 villagers – depending on the season – who live in around 100 structures and eke out an existence largely from subsistence agriculture.

Built on a scrubby ridge of limestone pavement, the houses of Khirbet Susiya are closely overlooked by a neighbouring Israeli settlement built on land expropriated from the villagers – illegal under international law – and, unlike the Palestinian village, connected to public services. On the other side of the nearby road is an archaeological site also run by settlers. Khirbet Susiya is sandwiched in-between.

It is this proximity – critics allege – that underlies Israeli plans to move the villagers. The residents say that the destruction of their homes would mean the latest in several forcible expulsions from their land for which they have deeds going back to the Ottoman era.

In 1986 they were expelled from their original village – the archaeological site run by settlers who also lived nearby. Until then villagers had lived in houses and cave houses there.

The army expelled the residents again in 2001 during the second intifada – a short time after Palestinians killed an Israeli from the neighbouring Susiya settlement. Then the residents relocated to their current location on their agricultural land.

While Israel claims the structures in Khirbet Susiya are illegal because they were put up without building permits, critics say that Israel’s civil administration has a policy of rarely issuing building permits to non-Jews in Area C – the part of the occupied territories under full Israeli administration. Although the Israeli court accepted the villagers’ ownership of the land, it ruled that they did not have permission to build there.

Seventy-year-old Mohammad Ahmad al-Nuwaja has lived on the land around Susiya most of his life. “I was born in Tal Arad, but after the Nakba [‘the catastrophe’ as Palestinians call the mass displacement that occurred when Israel was founded] we moved here. We are the original owners of this land,” he explains. “We have deeds from the Turkish time.

Mohammed al Nuwaja. Photograph: Peter Beaumont for the Observer

“They claim these houses were built without permits. We have applied so many times and the Israelis rejected permission. They claim we don’t have the infrastructure to support living here, but they are the ones who won’t allow the infrastructure. We were offered land in exchange for moving from here near Yatta [the neighbouring town visible from Khirbet Susiya] but they have no right.”

The long saga of Khirbet Susiya is symbolic of a wider problem of demolition and displacement affecting unrecognised villages in both the occupied Palestinian territories and Bedouin communities in Israel itself. According to Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli NGO which has been supporting the village in its efforts to get planning permission: “The village of Palestinian Susiya has existed for centuries, long before the establishment of the [Jewish settlement of Susiya in 1983. There is documentary evidence of a settlement in the area dating back to 1830, and it is also marked on British mandatory maps from 1917.”

There are indications, however, that the Israeli military intends to go ahead with the demolition. Almost immediately following the court ruling an Israeli inspector for the military’s civil administration, accompanied by soldiers, arrived to survey the houses – often a precursor to demolition. The latest threat to Susiya was prompted by a complaint three years ago by Regavim, a rightwing Israeli NGO, which uses the courts to insist on the demolition of Palestinian buildings it argues are illegal.

Regavim describes its mission as using the courts “to protect national lands and properties and prevent foreign elements from taking over the countries [sic] territorial resources” and pursued this case despite the fact that Kirbet Susiya is not in Israel but in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The villagers’ plight was described in a recent report by the Israeli human rights organisation BT’selem. “The state has been abusing the residents of Khirbet Susiya for many years: the army and the civil administration have repeatedly removed the residents from their homes, in which they have lived since before 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank.

“The [Israeli] civil administration is responsible for all aspects of civilian life in area C and is theoretically supposed to promote the wellbeing of the local population. In practice, the administration uses its planning systems, in which Palestinians are not represented, to prevent them from promoting solutions that would meet their needs, barring them from building legally and from connecting to water and power supplies.

“The authorities also systematically refrain from protecting the residents of Khirbet Susiya from settlers who attack them or vandalise their property, and restrict their free access to the main town in the district, Yatta.”

One of the make shift homes in Khirbet Susiya in the south Hebron hills. Photograph: Peter Beaumont for the Observer

For its part, the Israeli civil administration argued in 2013 that the villagers would be better off leaving their land and moving closer to the nearby town. It said: “We see the current plan [prepared by the village] as yet another attempt to keep a poor, downtrodden population from advancing; from choosing between partial income and other resources; it is an attempt to prevent the Palestinian woman from breaking the cycle of poverty and depriving her of educational and professional opportunities.

“Similarly, by sentencing the Palestinian child to life in a small, stultified village with no means for development, the plan keeps the child from being aware of all the opportunities available to any other person. It is our recommendation that the plan be rejected out of hand.”

The villagers don’t see it that way. Nasser Nuwaja is a resident who has been leading the campaign to save it. He points out that almost half the representatives on the village council are women and that whether they live on their own land should be their choice. “The land we were offered is 1.5km from here. But we don’t own it. It would cause a conflict with another family.

“Since the court ruling, people here have gone to bed not knowing whether the bulldozers would come in the morning. It is like trying to balance on a chair with only one leg and not knowing when you will fall off. People here are living on edge.”

And for now international pressure remains their best hope. “We’ve been campaigning hard on this issue,” said one European diplomat.

“We are trying to put pressure on the Israeli government to prevent the demolition.”

Although the villagers will try to go to court again on 3 August many are fearful the village will be destroyed and moved again. “God forbid they demolish Susiya again,” says Nasser. “But if they do, we will rebuild it.”