Israel rejects European plea to stop home demolitions

German, French, British, Italian and Spanish envoys say such punishment over Palestinian attacks is counterproductive.

Israeli police stand over burning tyres during clashes with stone-throwing Palestinians following Friday prayers in the West Bank city of Hebron on November 21, 2014. Abed Al Hashlamoun / EPA

JERUSALEM // Israel yesterday rejected an appeal by the five biggest members of the European Union against the demolition of homes of Palestinians involved in attacks on Jews.

The foreign ministry heard arguments from the German, French, British, Italian and Spanish ambassadors that the demolitions, carried out against one East Jerusalem dwelling this week and planned against four more, were liable to inflame tensions and were therefore counterproductive, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported.

Confirming Thursday’s meeting with the envoys, the foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the envoys were told that the measure was consistent with Israeli law and would be pursued.

“This is not meant to be punitive, but rather to dissuade others from carrying out terrorist attacks,” he said. Israel used home demolitions extensively during the Palestinian revolt of 2000-2005 but suspended the practice, citing concern that it entrenched hostility. Its revival in Jerusalem has also drawn criticism from the United States.

“We believe that punitive home demolitions are counterproductive in an already tense situation. This is a practice I would remind that the Israeli government itself discontinued in the past, recognising its effects,” the US state department said

Israeli authorities on Wednesday razed the home of a Palestinian who rammed his car into pedestrians in East Jerusalem last month, killing a woman and a child.

Four other homes – of a man involved in a similar attack earlier this month, another accused of shooting a hardline Jewish activist, and two cousins who attacked a synagogue this week, killing five people – have been marked for demolition.

All the attackers were shot dead after the incidents.

The attacks came amid heightened tensions in Jerusalem over Jewish claims to prayer rights at the Al Aqsa mosque compound and Jewish settlement in Arab East Jerusalem. Clashes at the mosque led Israeli authorities to limit entry for males to those over 35.

Israel eased the restrictions last week as part of steps aimed at reducing tensions, and Friday prayers at Al Aqsa passed peacefully for a second week.

However, a group of Palestinians later wounded two Jews as they walked to worship not far away, and in the West bank city of Hebron, stone-throwing Palestinians rioted, responding to a call by the militant Islamist group Hamas for a “day of rage”.

The military said it dispersed 300 stone-throwing Palestinian in Hebron without injuries or arrests.

Smaller clashes also took place at two other West Bank locations – Qalandiya and Kadom – also without injuries or arrests, the army said.

In Jerusalem, tens of thousands of people made their way to the Al Aqsa mosque compound, with police out in force to prevent a repeat of clashes, led by young Palestinians, that have rocked the city for months.

Men and women of all ages shuffled into the compound, holy to both Jews and Muslims, as police carefully checked the identity cards of younger worshippers.

But after dark, a few hundred metres away, Palestinians attacked seven Israelis on their way to Sabbath eve prayers, lightly injuring two of them following an exchange of insults.

“A group of Jewish worshippers were attacked as they walked to Beit Horot,” police said, referring to a Jewish seminary set up on the Mount of Olives by the ultranationalist rabbi Benny Elon in 1999.

One man was stabbed in the back and the second hit with a blunt instrument, apparently an iron bar.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security service that security forces had caught a Hamas group in the West Bank planning to assassinate the hawkish foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman.

It said three suspects in custody “collected advance intelligence on the minister’s convoy” on its journeys to and from his home in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim and sought to procure an rocket-propelled-grenade launcher with which to target his vehicle.

Shin Bet said Ibrahim El Zir, Ziad El Zir and Adnas Tzabih, all from the West Bank village of Harmala, near Nokdim, were arrested by the agency, the army and the police. It did not say when the arrests were made.

It said that during Israel’s July-August war in Gaza Ibrahim El Zir “began to formulate a plan to carry out an attack on the motorcade of foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, with the intention that the attack would send a message to Israel and bring a stop to the war in Gaza.”

It said that “in recent days” the suspects were charged in a West Bank military court with conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to traffic in weapons.

* Agence France-Presse and Reuters