With no prior notice or hearing: Two apartments in east Jerusalem were sealed as collective punishment and their occupants expelled from their homes: following HaMoked’s petition, the sealings were removed and the demolition order cancelled

On February 12, 2023, the Israel police and the military sealed two residential units in A-Tur in East Jerusalem, expelling six people, including two minors, from their homes, without prior notice, without their belongings and without giving them the opportunity to challenge the decision before the fact. The first apartment is the home of the parents and 15-year-old sister of a man who was killed while committing a fatal ramming attack on February 10, 2023. The man himself had lived with his wife and children in a rented apartment in a different neighborhood. His parents apartment was sealed under a temporary sealing order pursuant to Regulation 119 of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of the British Mandate era. The other apartment is the home of the perpetrator’s sister, her spouse and their baby daughter and it was sealed without any order. 

That same day, HaMoked sent the military an urgent objection and on the following day, February 13, 2023, submitted an urgent petition to the High Court of Justice for a temporary injunction and an interim order for the immediate reversal of the sealing. HaMoked noted that the sealing was implemented in an unacceptable manner, without prior notice and without according the families the right to plead their cases – thereby exacerbating the severe harm caused to their basic rights to dignity, property and family life. HaMoked pointed out that this harsh administrative measure was used against innocent people that were not suspected of involvement in or foreknowledge of the attack, and whose apartments were not connected to it.

Moreover, the perpetrator had a severe mental health condition and was released from a psychiatric hospitalization a day before the ramming attack. HaMoked asserted that given the absence of the judicially-required residential tie between the apartments and the perpetrator, and more so given the denial of the basic rights to plead one’s case and to a hearing before the sealing, clearly “the military commander does not have the authority to use Regulation 119… and any action against these apartments constitutes a wrongful decision that appears to be an act of vengeance contrary to the case law of the Supreme Court and to international law”.  

HaMoked also argued that in these circumstances, the sealing was an unreasonable and disproportionate measure of collective punishment that “amounts to a war crime and ethnic cleansing that is considered a crime against humanity”. HaMoked noted that under Israeli case law, the more severe and irreversible the consequences of an official decision, the more rigorously must the Court scrutinize the authority’s actions, and the weightier and more persuasive must be the evidence held by the authority. Therefore, in the case in hand, “given the lack of a clear evidential foundation… such a draconian sanction as the seizure and demolition of the petitioners’ homes should not be taken, until the matter is exhaustively clarified and this in view of the substantive and severe harm to the petitioners’ rights”.

That same day, the Israel police removed the sealing from the sister’s apartment and it was later announced that “this residential unit was indeed sealed by mistake, together with another residential unit that is not occupied. This, after the forces in situ mistakenly assumed that these apartments were part of the area of the apartment of the assailant’s parents that was to be sealed…”.

On February 26, 2023, the State Attorney’s Office announced that the military accepted the objection and ordered the removal of the temporary sealing of the parents’ apartment. This, “following an examination of all of the arguments raised in the objection, as well as the outcome of the criminal and intelligence investigation of the incident…”. In the supplemented response to the objection, the military defended the unacceptable immediate sealing of the parents’ apartment, claiming – with a stark error – that “in the circumstances of the matter, it was correct to make a swift move of temporarily sealing the assailant’s home, for deterrence purposes…” (emphasis added). However, continued the military, the enquiry conducted following the sealing for the purpose of examining the “feasibility of demolishing the apartment later on”, led to the conclusion that “the assailant [had] a mental [health] background and a dual residential tie, both to his parents’ home and to another apartment, whereas under the case law a clear residential tie must be pointed out. Therefore, the security entities advised the Home Front Commander not to exercise in this case the tool of home demolition and to remove the existing sealing” (emphasis in the original).