OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP)
Israel's security chiefs said on Wednesday that more needed to be done to protect Jerusalem from Palestinian attacks as debate raged after a second bulldozer rampage in the Holy City this month.
A Palestinian from occupied east Jerusalem ploughed through a crowded street on Tuesday, wounding 16 people before being shot dead in an apparent copycat attack modeled on a similar rampage this month that killed three people.
There have since been mounting calls for Israel to return to a policy of destroying the family homes of Palestinian attackers, despite a military report that concluded in 2005 that the practice was ineffective.
"Sanctions should be applied against the families of terrorists in cases where it is proved that they collaborated in attacks, or did nothing to stop them," Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit told public radio.
"If it is determined that there is a real tendency among Palestinian workers from east Jerusalem to use heavy equipment to perpetrate attacks, then replacements should be found in Israel."
Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's internal Shin Beth security agency, had ironically told a powerful parliamentary committee hours before Tuesday's attack about the "problem of deterrence" in mostly Arab east Jerusalem, where both bulldozer drivers lived.
Diskin had been briefing the foreign affairs and defense committee about the July 2 bulldozer attack and a shooting in March, when a lone gunman from east Jerusalem attacked a Jewish seminary and killed eight students.
The YNet news website quoted security officials as saying that what they characterize as "popular attacks," such as stabbings and the throwing of Molotov cocktails, are on the rise.
There have been five major attacks in Jerusalem this year, which claimed the lives of 12 Israelis, and the number of terror-related arrests has risen sharply, according to media reports.
Prior to that, the last major attack in Jerusalem dated back to 2004, when two border policemen were killed in a suicide bombing. |
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Beginning 2008 Media quoted officials as saying that during the first six months of 2008, police arrested 71 Palestinians from east Jerusalem, compared with only 37 for all of 2007 and a total of 270 since 2000.
Some 250,000 Palestinians live in east Jerusalem, which was occupied an annexed by Israel in the 1967 war in a move not recognized by the international community.
They are issued with Israeli identity cards, which allow them to circulate freely throughout the country and to work there, as well as enjoy such social benefits as unemployment compensation and family allowances.
After the July 2 attack, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke out in favor of resuming the demolition of the family homes of those that carry out attacks.
During the Palestinian uprising which was unleashed in 2000, Israel systematically destroyed the homes of Palestinians involved in deadly attacks.
But the practice stopped in 2005 after then army chief Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon said it was not a deterrent.
In addition to the razing of homes, there are also calls for even more arrests of potential attackers.
"There isn't enough effective activity," YNet quoted one Shin Beth official as saying. "We need to enter villages in the east of the city more often and carry out more arrests, in order to deter the next terrorist." |
