Israeli demolition of Palestinian home follows synagogue attack

A thunderous explosion and the crunch of collapsing masonry early Wednesday heralded the revival of what had been a largely abandoned Israeli tactic: the demolition of family homes of Palestinians who stage attacks against Jews.

Less than 24 hours after four religious scholars were killed while at prayer in a Jerusalem synagogue, and a police officer was fatally wounded while trying to thwart the attackers, Israeli forces before dawn surrounded a four-story building in the Silwan neighborhood of predominantly Arab East Jerusalem. They evicted those inside and methodically rigged the structure with explosives, sending a blast reverberating across the valley and leaving the building standing but uninhabitable.

The demolished home did not belong to one of the synagogue attackers; some of its residents were relatives of a man who nearly a month earlier drove a car into a crowd waiting at a Jerusalem tram stop, killing an Israeli 3-month-old girl with American citizenship and a 22-year-old woman who was hoping to immigrate to Israel from Ecuador.

But the demolition carried an unmistakable message: After the carnage at the synagogue in the devout West Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed that destroying homes would be one of the principal countermeasures wielded by Israel. The killers in Tuesdays attack died, but their families, he said grimly, could expect to pay the price.

We will not accept this reality, said Netanyahu, who also ordered measures such as increased gun permits for Israeli Jews, checkpoints at the entrances to Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and more guards in public places.

Home demolitions, roundly despised by Palestinians, were strongly condemned by the international community and human rights groups when the practice was most widely in use, more than a decade ago. The United Nations and others described it as an unfair form of collective punishment.

Demolishing Palestinian homes as a punishment, deterrent or both dates to Israel's capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East War. The practice reached its height during the second Palestinian intifada, when about 700 Palestinian families about 4,000 people were left homeless between the autumn of 2000 and early 2005, according to the Israeli rights group B'Tselem.

To some, the tactic raises moral issues. In Israel, though, the tenor of the debate is somewhat different, centering on the question of whether home demolitions are a true deterrent against attacks.

During the intifada, Israels security establishment harbored differing schools of thought on whether knowing that their families would be made homeless gave attackers pause or merely served to radicalize those left behind younger brothers, cousins, neighbors.

The demolition of houses is a controversial topic, commentator Alon Ben-David wrote in Wednesdays editions of the newspaper Maariv. He said the Israeli militarys assessment was that demolitions were not effective, but that officials from the domestic intelligence service Shin Bet could tell you about the dozens of fathers who handed over their terrorist sons in order to keep their houses whole.

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Israeli demolition of Palestinian home follows synagogue attack