Center for the Defence of the Individual - Home belonging to parents of Qalandiya minor to be demolished with HCJ approval: the justices ruled the father had “turned a blind eye” to his son’s conduct
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חזרה לעמוד הקודם
12.04.2016

Home belonging to parents of Qalandiya minor to be demolished with HCJ approval: the justices ruled the father had “turned a blind eye” to his son’s conduct

On March 3, 2016, HaMoked filed two HCJ petitions seeking the revocation of a punitive demolition order issued for a home in Qalandiya Refugee Camp. One petition was filed on behalf of the family living in the home and the other on behalf of the neighbors. The target of the demolition order is the family home of a 17-year-old who perpetrated the January 25, 2016 attack in the settlement of Beit Horon. The family apartment, where the assailant’s parents and brother live, is located in the third story of a four-story building. HaMoked argued the plan to demolish the home is a disproportionate measure, considering the family had no involvement in the son’s actions.

On March 23, 2016, the court heard the petitions jointly, addressing also the issue of the parents’ responsibility, given that the assailant was a minor and the family did not know he was planning to carry out an attack. Justice Zylbertal noted that the lesser the responsibility of the minor, the greater the responsibility of the parents: “They should have known. Parental duty to supervise minors is different from parental duty to supervise adult children”. The state presented the justices with classified material regarding talks the ISA had with the young man’s father several months before the incident, in which they warned him he must keep an eye on his son as there were “tell-tale signs”.

In the judgment issued on April 12, 2016, the HCJ rejected the petitions. The neighbors’ petition was rejected in view of the state’s decision to use a “manual demolition”, meaning the apartment interior would be filled with barbed wire and a foaming material. In the family’s petition, Justice Baron determined that the intelligence information presented by the state “clearly indicates awareness on the part of the family’s father, in real time, of the danger posed by his son”. Justice Amit adopted the recent ruling by Justice Baron (HCJ 1125/06) that the family’s degree of involvement must be a determining factor in the examination of whether or not a decision to employ Regulation 119 was proportionate, and that, in this context, even constructive knowledge (turning a blind eye) would be considered involvement. The justice added that “in the case at hand, the fact that the terrorist is a minor does not help the Petitioners, rather the opposite”.

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