The Israeli security forces sealed this Sunday the family home of the Palestinian who killed seven people on Friday in front of a synagogue in East Jerusalem, in one of the retaliatory measures against the “relatives of terrorists” announced yesterday by the government of the prime minister. , Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli Security Cabinet had announced on Saturday night that it would take action against “relatives of terrorists who support terrorism.”
Among the measures cited was the possibility of depriving them of social security or taking away their Israeli identity documentation. The latter will be examined by the Council of Ministers.
New meeting today of the Security Cabinet
After a first meeting last night, the Israeli Security Cabinet met again today to outline its action plan in the face of the current rise in tension. Among other issues, he plans to promote a bill to revoke the residency of Palestinian attackers in occupied East Jerusalem. They would be deported to areas of the occupied West Bank under self-government by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).
The Executive also announced this afternoon that it will apply measures so that workers “who have supported terrorism” can be fired without the need for the dismissal to be validated in a court hearing.
Houses of terrorists, sealed
It had also been indicated yesterday that the house of the family of Khayri Alqam, author of the attack on Friday in Neve Yaakov, “would be sealed immediately before being destroyed.” An AFP correspondent saw how the Israeli forces hermetically closed the different entrances to the house today, while its inhabitants were forced to leave it.
It was also announced that the home of the family of the minor who committed yesterday’s attack would be closed and sealed. This marks a change in Israel’s policy in this area: its forces often demolish or seal off the homes of Palestinians who killed Israelis in retaliation, actions branded as collective punishment by human rights groups. However, until now it did not seal the homes of the perpetrators of attacks without deaths.
detained relatives
Alqam’s mother and four other people are still being held at a police station, police said, arresting 42 suspects after the shooting. Alqam, 21, killed seven people outside a synagogue in East Jerusalem on Friday, before being shot dead after a short police chase.
On Saturday, another Palestinian youth, just 13 years old, shot and wounded a 47-year-old man and his 23-year-old son, before being “wounded and neutralized” in a neighborhood outside the wall that delimits the Old City, in Jerusalem. This one, police reported. No organization claimed responsibility for these two attacks.
Israeli security agents killed a Palestinian near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Sunday morning, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The Army confirmed having opened fire on an “armed” man. The current escalation of violence escalated on Thursday with an Israeli military raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, which killed ten Palestinians, several of them militants, but also an elderly woman.
The demolition of homes of relatives of Palestinians who killed Israelis is not a new measure in Israel, whose authorities defend it for its deterrent effects, although its detractors consider it unnecessary collective punishment.
The head of the legal department of the Israeli NGO HaMoked, Dani Shenhar, said that the announced demolition of that house shows “the will for revenge” of the government “against the relatives”. It is a measure taken “without any respect for the rule of law,” he added.