Israeli security forces sealed off this Sunday the family home of the Palestinian who killed seven people on Friday outside a synagogue in East Jerusalem, in one of the first retaliatory measures against “terrorist relatives.”
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 is 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.
It had also been indicated that the home of the family of Khayri Alqam, the perpetrator of the attack on Friday in Neve Yaakov, “would be cordoned off immediately before being destroyed.”
An AFP correspondent saw how the Israeli forces hermetically closed the different entrances to the house, while its inhabitants were forced to leave it.
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.
Khayri 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.
Three of the victims of the shooting on Friday were buried on Saturday night, according to an AFP journalist.
They were Asher Natan, a 14-year-old teenager, and Eli and Natalie Mizrahi, a couple who tried to help the first victims of the attack.
This spiral of violence began on Thursday with an Israeli incursion into the occupied Palestinian enclave of the West Bank, in which nine Palestinians were killed, including an elderly woman.
A Palestinian house and car were torched in the West Bank village of Turmus Ayya, an attack attributed by residents to Israeli settlers but not confirmed by the Israeli military.
The Israeli government placed security forces on high alert and the army announced reinforcements in the West Bank.
Israeli security agents killed a Palestinian near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Sunday morning, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
According to the Israeli army, the man was “armed”.
The security cabinet of the Hebrew State proposed on Saturday night to facilitate the carrying of weapons by civilians.
“When civilians carry weapons, they can defend themselves,” Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir told reporters.
“Our response will be vigorous, swift and precise,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who returned to power in December with a new government that includes ministers from the far-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties.
The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, considered that Israel is “fully responsible for the dangerous escalation.”
From Washington to Moscow, passing through Paris, calls from international leaders multiplied asking to avoid “a spiral of violence.”
The head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, arrived in Egypt on Sunday to start a short tour of the Middle East, which will include a stop in Jerusalem and another in Ramallah.
Pope Francis condemned the upsurge in violence and called on the two parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to undertake a “sincere search for peace.”
Israeli MP Mickey Levy, of the centrist Yesh Atid (opposition) party, warned that the new wave of violence was reminiscent of the second Intifada, the Palestinian uprising from 2000 to 2005, which saw bloody clashes.