On July 11, 2017, the military issued a notice of an intended punitive demolition order for a home in Deir Abu Mash'al, Ramallah District, where lived a youth implicated in a shooting and stabbing attack near the Old City of Jerusalem, carried out on June 16, 2017. In the two story home live the youth’s parents and his four siblings, aged 11-16. The demolition order targets both the second floor, where the family lives, and the storage rooms on the first floor (i.e., all except the first-floor area still under construction).
On July 16, 2017, HaMoked submitted to the military an
objection to the planned demolition. HaMoked stressed, as in previous cases, that demolishing a home was a wrongful and illicit act, which leaves a family homeless and severely traumatized for no wrong on its part. HaMoked stressed that the family members could not anticipate the son’s actions, which they found repugnant, and would have tried to prevent had they known about them beforehand. Hence, asserted HaMoked, the military’s purported deterrence objective does not apply to this case.
