On November 4, 2015, HaMoked filed an
objection to the demolition order issued earlier that day for the alleged family home of the assailant in the attack on Malkhei Yisrael St. in Jerusalem on October 13, 2015. The order was issued after an
earlier order was cancelled due to an error in identifying the assailant’s dwelling place, so claimed the military. The new order targets another apartment in Jabal al-Mukabber, which the military maintains is where the assailant actually lived, together with his wife and children; and on the two other floors of the same building, live the assailant’s extended family members. HaMoked rejected the military’s claim that the family had misled the military to misidentify the assailants’ place of residence, and asserted that the youth did not live on the ground floor of the extended family’s building – a mistaken premise which underlies the military’s new demolition order – but it was rather his sister who lived there, together with her husband and children.
Additionally, on November 15, 2015, HaMoked filed two objections to the demolition order issued for another home in Jabal al-Mukabber, in which lived one of the assailants in the attack in Armon HaNatziv Neighborhood in Jerusalem on October 13, 2015 – one objection on behalf of the family, the other on behalf of the neighbors. The order targets the apartment in which lived the youth with his parents, his brothers and their own families, located on the middle floor of a three-floor building. In the objection on the family’s behalf, HaMoked held that the demolition would cause severe harm to ten innocent people – constituting collective punishment, a prohibited act under international law. In the other objection, on behalf of the rest of the building’s occupants, HaMoked argued that the demolition might also harm these 16 innocent people – among them children – on top of the harm to the apartment occupants.
On November 26, 2015, the
military’s responses arrived, dismissing HaMoked’s three objections. In dismissing the objection of the family of the assailant in the Malkhei Yisrael St. attack, the military contended that the youth had lived on the targeted apartment and that his family had false represented the facts, which caused the military to initially misidentify the assailant’s residence.
In response to the neighbors’ objection to demolishing the house in which lived the assailant in the Armon HaNatziv attack, the military noted that the demolition would be done manually “without damage to the construction, while keeping the parameters of the sector, using just mechanical and electrical implements”. The military maintained that “the manual demolition is intended to significantly reduce the potential for surrounding damage resulting from the demolition execution itself, and therefore, in the Home Front Commander’s view, this is highly reasonable measure.”
