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Israel abandons home demolition policy { February 17 2005 }

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   http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/02/17/international/i094842S79.DTL

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/02/17/international/i094842S79.DTL

Israeli Abandons Home Demolition Policy
- By KARIN LAUB, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, February 17, 2005


(02-17) 09:48 PST JERUSALEM, Israel (AP) --

Israel will abandon a decades-old policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen, accepting an army panel's assessment that the practice does not deter attacks and should be stopped, the military said Thursday.

The decision means an end to a policy that has led to the destruction of more than 1,800 Palestinian homes as punishment since Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war, including 675 during the past four years of fighting, the Israeli human rights group B'tselem said.

Human rights groups have condemned the demolitions as collective punishment and have demanded for years that they be halted. B'tselem says the policy violates international law.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz ordered the demolitions stopped on the recommendation of Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, the military said, referring to the tactic as Israel's "legal right."

"The chief of staff clarified that if an extreme change in circumstances takes place, the aforementioned decision regarding the policy will be re-examined," the statement added.

The committee found that house demolitions generally inflame hatred, citing only 20 cases in which the threat of demolition deterred potential attackers or pushed their families to turn them in. Militant groups compensate families of attackers and help them rebuild, which weakens any possible deterrent effect.

House demolitions, along with other army practices such as targeted killings of Palestinian militants, were suspended after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas declared a truce earlier this month.

Yaalon concluded that "when there's more quiet, it's not the time to use this policy," a military official said on condition of anonymity.

Punitive demolitions during the last four years have left 4,239 Palestinians homeless, most of them in the West Bank, B'tselem said. Since 2000, more than 1,000 Israelis have been killed in bombings and shootings.

The human rights group says the Israeli military has destroyed more than 4,000 Palestinian homes during the current conflict. Most were razed in operations to clear away buildings used by militants as cover for attacks or to widen security roads. Those practices were not included in Thursday's decision.

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said the change in policy was part of the package of measures Israelis and Palestinians agreed to earlier this month during their Egyptian summit, where they declared an end to four years of bloodletting.

The package, Ashrawi said, was meant to end not only the demolition of homes, but Israeli military raids and assassinations of wanted men as well.

"We think this is the implementation of one part of the deal, and we hope they will implement all the other parts," she said.

The three-story home belonging to the family of Ala Sanakra, local leader of the violent Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade in the West Bank refugee camp of Balata, was demolished last fall after he recruited a 19-year-old woman from a nearby camp to blow herself up at a busy Jerusalem junction, killing herself and two Israeli policemen.

Sanakra, a bachelor, had his own apartment in the family compound, which was home to nine people. He said the army could have demolished his rooms and spared the rest of the house.

The demolition "motivated me to send more people on missions and gave more motivation to our fighters," Sanakra said in a telephone interview Thursday.

He has the money to rebuild but will not do so because he fears the army will raze any new construction, he said. For now, he rents a room nearby for $180 a month. His mother often visits the pile of rubble that was once her home and drinks her morning coffee there, he said.

The policy of house demolitions is a holdover from the British rule of Palestine and has been used intermittently in the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, peaking during the first Palestinian uprising from 1987-1993 and in the current round of violence. Legal efforts by human rights groups to halt the practice have failed.

B'tselem said that in many of the demolitions since 2000, adjacent buildings also were damaged or razed. In half the cases, the army never claimed the houses it demolished were home to Palestinians directly involved in attacks, the group said. In 97 percent of the demolitions, residents received no warning, the group said.

Boaz Ganor, an Israeli counterterrorism expert, said the policy has been applied too indiscriminately during the past four years but should not be halted entirely. The military should keep razing houses if relatives of an attacker were involved in violence or if an attack led to large numbers of Israeli casualties, he said.

Ganor acknowledged that effectiveness was not the military's only consideration, and that demolitions are a way of settling scores and appeasing public opinion. The army revived the policy in October 2001 after a three-year lull.
___

Associated Press reporter Ali Daraghmeh in Nablus, West Bank, contributed to this report.



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