Jerusalem – Israeli police on Thursday handed home demolition notices to families of two more attackers from east Jerusalem, a Palestinian official said, a day after security personnel destroyed a home there for the first time in five years.
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Said Abu Jamal, a cousin of the men, said their families in east Jerusalem received demolition orders from Israeli police on Thursday.
Police say Ghassan and Oday Abu Jamal burst into a crowded synagogue on Tuesday morning, killing four worshippers and a Druze Arab policeman with meat cleavers and gunfire before they were shot dead.
The destructions are a renewed tactic meant as a punitive measure for a wave of Palestinian attacks on Israelis, including a deadly assault on a Jerusalem synagogue this week. Although the tactic has caused much controversy and debate over its effectiveness, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stepped up the demolition orders in an effort to halt the violence.
Adnan Husseini, the Palestinian Authority minister for Jerusalem affairs, said the families of Ibrahim al-Akari and Moataz Hijazi received the notices on Thursday. An Israeli police spokesman said he was checking the report.
Al-Akari was shot dead by security forces after killing two Israelis earlier this month, when he rammed his car into a Jerusalem light rail station. Israeli police also killed Hijazi after he shot and seriously wounded an Israeli activist who has lobbied for greater Jewish access to a sensitive Jerusalem holy site in October.
Netanyahu has called for tough action amid a wave of attacks against Israelis. Eleven people have died in five separate incidents in recent weeks — most of them in Jerusalem, but also in Tel Aviv and the occupied West Bank. At least five Palestinians involved in the attacks were killed.
The attacks reached a new turning point on Tuesday when two Palestinian assailants burst into a crowded synagogue during morning prayers, killing four worshippers and a Druze Arab policeman with meat cleavers and gunfire. It was the deadliest attack in the city since 2008.
The violence has taken place against the background of roiling tensions over access to Jerusalem’s most holy site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The Palestinians fear that Israel wants to allow Jews to pray there, breaking a status quo in effect since Israel captured the area in the 1967 Mideast War.
Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have repeatedly denied the claim but nationalistic politicians have increasingly stirred tensions by visiting the site.
The tensions have spurred anti-Arab demonstrations by Israeli hardliners. On Wednesday, Mayor Itamar Shimoni of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon suspended Israeli Arab laborers from work. They were renovating bomb shelters at local day-care centers.
The move drew widespread criticism on Thursday, including from Netanyahu who said “there is no place for discrimination against Israeli Arabs.” Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who anchors the far right wing of Netanyahu’s coalition, insisted that “99 percent of Israeli Arabs are completely loyal” to Israel.
Arab citizens make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population of 8 million people. Tensions over the Jerusalem holy site have spilled into their community as well. Against this backdrop, Israeli police recently shot to death an Arab Israeli man who approached a police car wielding a knife.
I would like to add my voice to those who call not for the isolated demolition of apartments or homes but a true demonstration of national sovereignty. Bury the terrorists in anonymous plots expel immediate family members from the country or at the very least cease all benefits and give the additional funds to victim’s families, and establish a green plaza starting from the Dung Gate to Ir Dovid and extending to and including all approaches to Har Hazeisim. Each block demolished should be established in the name of a terror victim,recent and past. Terror has a price but it should be exacted from those who perpetrate it, not from those who suffer its horror. This is not collective punishment – rather it would a demonstration of collective resolve that terror will never win. Am Yisroel Chai.
No room for discrimination????? These people are unstable ……let’s send Israel some potricanishers……or let them hire the African Illegals
Why give them advance notice of demolition? I say, just herd together the family members who live there, remove them for either deportation or death penalty, and destroy the house. So what if these vermin lose all their belongings? Almost any punishment one can fathom is not enough for these bloodthirsty savages.
They’re given notice of demolition? Were the shul victims given notice? Deliver the terrorists’ families to the door of Abbas and leave them there for him to feed and shelter.
Reply to 1. Truly excellent ideas, especially deportation. Right now, if their house needs replacing they can just pull a terror attack and Israel helps them demolish their shack. Deportation is real soon in the game
It’ll just create more problems. You need to hand them eviction notices and drop them on the boarder of the nearest arab country.
Or you could do as country yossi suggested and use cholent as a wmd