On August 3, 2016, the
HCJ issued a judgment in
HaMoked’s petition against a punitive demolition order issued for a house in Bani Na’im in Hebron District, in which had lived a juvenile assailant who perpetrated an attack against Israelis in the Kiryat Arba settlement on June 30, 2016. The Justices reduced the scope of the demolition order – which initially targeted the entire three-floor structure – to just the middle floor, in which the minor had lived with his parents and siblings. On the ground floor there are storage rooms and the upper floor is under construction and is intended for the future use of four of the family’s children, the youngest four and the oldest 23, still unmarried.
Justice Danziger found the state’s decision to demolish the entire house unbalanced, both because of the absence of a habitation link between the assailant and two of the building’s three floors and given the severe repercussions a complete demolition would have on the lives of his siblings who had no connection to the attack. Justice Danziger also mentioned another
recent judgment, in which the HCJ limited the scope of a demolition order and approved just the demolition of the floor in which the assailant had resided, but not the floor on which his parents and siblings lived. The Justice stressed the state’s commitment to the principle of proportionality in reaching a decision to issue a punitive demolition order.
Justice Sohlberg joined Justice Danziger’s opinion, but emphasized he disagreed with the determination that the assailant had no habitation link to the other floors and that he accepted the military commander’s principled position whereby “it is possible to see such a residential structure, overall, as a single residential unit”. In this case, Justice Sohlberg held it was an unbalanced action to demolish the entire structure, given that the upper floor was uninhabited and was intended to be used as the living place of the family’s children in the future.
The HCJ decided to set the expiration date of the temporary order issued in the petition to ten days from the date of judgment.
