Israel demolishes Palestinian home

JERUSALEM – 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 Tuesday’s 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.

In Israel, the tenor of the debate is somewhat different, centering on the question of whether home demolitions are a true deterrent against attacks.

“The demolition of houses is a controversial topic,” commentator Alon Ben-David wrote in Wednesday’s editions of the newspaper Maariv. He said the Israeli military’s 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.”

Others said demolitions were one of the few weapons in a frustratingly scant Israeli arsenal against the current wave of attacks.

The Israeli military said in a tweet early Wednesday that “demolishing terrorists’ homes sends a sharp message to anyone targeting civilians or members of the security forces: Terror and hurting innocent people carries a heavy price that will be paid by those who choose to continue this path.”

But after the demolition in Silwan, the family of Abd Rahman Shaludi, the 20-year-old whose vehicle careened into a crowd at a light-rail stop Oct. 22, telegraphed defiance. The family has said Shaludi lost control of the vehicle and did not intend to hit the crowd.

“Israel thinks if they demolish our homes, they are going to prevent these acts,” the family matriarch, Inas Shaludi, was quoted as saying by Palestinian media. “But what they do not know is that violence brings more violence.”