After Palestinian murderer’s West Bank house destroyed, debate over practice revisited
A home in the West Bank village of Kobar was reduced to rubble overnight, as Israeli security forces demolished the former residence of Palestinian teenager Omar al-Abed, who brutally stabbed to death three members of the Salomon family on July 21 in the Jewish community of Halamish. Israel has long defended its policy of home demolitions, arguing that it acts as a deterrent to would-be terrorists, whereas opponents view the controversial practice as a form of collective punishment.
The destruction of the al-Abed house was expedited by Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman—occurring less than one month after Omar’s attack—and comes after Israel recently razed the homes of the murderers of Israeli border policewoman Hadas Malka and IDF soldier Elichai Taharlev, who were killed in separate incidents in June and April, respectively.
Brig. Gen. (ret.) Lior Akerman, who served as a division head in the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), told The Media Line that house demolitions “certainly have an element of deterrence towards the families of the terrorists…and can be very effective. Experience shows that the terrorists themselves also think of the demolition as a deterrent.
“At the same time,” he continued, “there are several problems in its application. The first is that the execution usually takes a very long time due to legal aspects [because in most cases family members petition the courts to prevent the demolition]. This allows the families to move to a new house or simply prepare for the action. The second issue is that the Palestinian Authority constructs new homes for the families or provides them with alternative housing.”
According to Akerman, “in the face of terrorism, it is difficult to achieve meaningful deterrence, as these are people who go out to carry out an attack with a willingness to die, so they are not afraid of anything.”
This reality greatly limits Israel’s options according to Brig. Gen. (ret.) Israela Oron, a former Israeli deputy national security advisor who was instrumental in devising policies towards the Palestinians. “It is very difficult to control or alter the motivation of terrorists,” she explained to The Media Line. “One of the means is demolitions because the assumption is that the potential perpetrators do not want to make the lives of their families worse than they already are. But this is questionable—if someone is ready to sacrifice his own life, then it is likely he is willing to sacrifice his family’s well being as well.”
Within this context, Oron stressed, “there are very, very few measures that can be taken because nothing is more important to terrorists than their ideology or religion. How do you combat against this? Sometimes the security apparatus feels helpless because it wants to protect the population.”
While acknowledging that some view home demolitions as a form of collective punishment, Oron largely dismisses criticism levelled against Israel in this regard. “It is a very complicated issue and many western countries condemn us for this. But I challenge the international community to propose other ideas instead.”
According to Jeff Halper, Director of The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the destruction of homes belonging to terrorists (including their sealing with concrete) accounts for just over one percent of the total number of structures demolished by Israel in the West Bank since 1967 (other reasons include lack of building permits, construction on state land, zoning violations, etc.). “There have been about 650 of these ‘punitive demolitions’ out of some 50,000,” Halper revealed to The Media Line, before expressing his opposition to the policy “because it is not aimed at the perpetrator—who is either dead or jailed—so thus violates the human rights of the immediate family and also negatively impacts the wider community.” (In the case of Omar al-Abed, specifically, this may not be entirely true, as police announced Tuesday that five members of his family would be charged for failing to stop the Halamish attack despite knowing about the plan beforehand).
Moreover, Harper contended, that Israel is walking a legal tightrope. “Some Israeli politicians claim it is a deterrent, but then others call it retribution—and it is against international law to destroy properties as a form of punishment.” In this respect, he also noted that the army’s position does not necessarily accord with Israeli officialdom’s, with the IDF having long contended that the policy has a boomerang effect; namely, that it serves to incite more violence.
A formal Israeli military committee set up in 2005 and chaired by Maj. Gen. Udi Shani reached this exact conclusion. The body found little evidence that home demolitions created effective deterrence, which anyways paled in comparison to the hostility toward Israel the measure provoked among the Palestinians. As such, then-minister of defense Shaul Mofaz adopted the committee’s recommendation to stop employing the practice, which lasted almost a decade until the summer of 2014, when the policy was reinstituted following the abduction and subsequent killing of three Jewish students in the West Bank, an incident that sparked the fifty-day war between Israel and Hamas.
Another kidnapping and murder that year prompted further questioning of the practice of home demolitions, but with a twist. On July 2, 2014, Yosef Haim Ben-David masterminded the savage killing of 16-year-old Palestinian Muhammad Abu Khdeir. The incident was denounced across the Israeli political spectrum as an act of terror, and, in the result, the victim’s family petitioned the courts to compel the government to demolish Ben-David’s house.
Almost three years to the day later, a three-member panel of Israel’s High Court of Justice rejected the motion, arguing that the refusal to destroy Ben-David’s home was not discriminatory but rather unnecessary. The judges noted that Israeli law permits home demolitions only as a means of deterrence and not for the purpose of punishment, and thereby accepted the state’s argument that, because there are vastly more Palestinian terrorists than there are Jewish terrorists, they should be viewed and dealt with differently.
Because of the dubious efficacy—and legitimacy—of home demolitions, some have started promoting other harsher measures to deter potential terrorists. After the latest demolition in Kobar, Michal Salomon, whose husband was stabbed to death in Omar al-Abed’s attack, called for capital punishment to be introduced. “Their house can be rebuilt, my home has been destroyed forever,” she wrote in a statement, “we need the death penalty so that these terrorists will not be able to build a new home.”
Many leading Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, came out in favor of capital punishment for terrorists in the wake of the Halamish attack; however, most analysts view its implementation as highly unlikely and rather attribute such comments to politicking. Moreover, there is also little proof that the death penalty would act as a deterrent.
For example, during the 2015-2016 “Stabbing Intifada” hundreds of Palestinians perpetrated attacks despite the stark reality that doing so meant almost certain death. Some 200 Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli security forces while committing stabbings over the period, and many of those who were captured by authorities later admitted that they would have preferred to die. Most observers agreed that Palestinian attackers were knowingly embarking on suicide missions.
Lior Akerman stressed to The Media Line that “brainwashed terrorists are aware they are going to their deaths and are not afraid. So the death penalty would not deter them.” Irrespective, he asserted, “it is difficult to imagine how capital punishment could actually come about in Israel.”
For her part, Israela Oron offered an altogether different proposition. “While there may be no viable options to deter terrorists at the tactical level,” she conceded, “there are possibilities at the strategic level. If there were to be a Palestinian state and an end to the Israeli occupation, this would dramatically decrease terror attacks, which would make this whole conversation much less important.”