Israel's top court has approved the eviction of 1,300 Palestinians from an area designated as an army training ground in the West Bank.
Human rights activists criticised the decision on Thursday, which came after a legal battle lasting more than 20 years.
Called "Firing Zone 918," the area of more than 3,300 hectares is located near Hebron in the southern West Bank.
Shepherds and farmers live there in eight Palestinian villages.
The army had declared the area a military exclusion zone at the beginning of the 1980s.
The court rejected the Palestinian residents' argument that they had lived there before.
The Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem wrote that the decision served the purpose of "taking over their lands in the service of Jewish interests".
"The justices have thus proved once again that the occupied cannot expect justice from the occupier's court," B'Tselem said.
The international community must prevent Israel from expelling the residents from the area, it said.
The Israeli Civil Liberties Union warned of "grave consequences".
Israel conquered the West Bank and East Jerusalem, among other territories, during the 1967 Six-Day War.
About 600,000 Israelis live there today in more than 200 settlements.
In 2016, the United Nations Security Council described these settlements as a violation of international law and called on Israel to stop all settlement activities.
The Palestinians want to establish their own state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) on Thursday said there were "unprecedented consequences" to the top court's ruling handed down "without warning in the middle of the night".
It "allows the expulsion of approximately 1,000 women, men, children and elderly Palestinians," the organisation said in a statement.
Lawyers said they were still trying to see whether there were any further legal avenues to stop the expulsions.
