Timeline: Punitive Home Demolitions
By Annie Slemrod in Jerusalem
As tensions run high in Jerusalem and the West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for “expediting the demolition of terrorists’ homes” and the Israeli army appears to be acting in tandem, razing two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem overnight Monday.
The demolitions added fuel to the fire in East Jerusalem, where clashes have taken place since Israel barred many Palestinians from the old city over the weekend. The ban came after a Palestinian man stabbed two Israelis to death in the old city and another Israeli was wounded in a separate stabbing.
The newly destroyed homes belonged to the families of Ghassan Abu Jamal and Mohammad Jabis. Abu Jamal and an accomplice attacked a Jerusalem synagogue in November 2014, killing four. He was shot dead by police. Jaabis was also shot dead after driving a tractor into a bus in August 2014, killing one.
Amnesty International has called punitive home demolition “flagrant collective punishment.” Israel halted the practice in 2005, but it appears to be back with a vengeance. IRIN looks at the history of Israel's controversial anti-terror tactic:
Have donors forgotten Gaza?
A year after pledging $3.5 billion to help Gaza recover from last summer’s deadly conflict, sluggish donors have delivered barely a third of the aid they promised.
New World Bank figures show that the biggest offenders are often those who pledged high at an October 2014 conference: Saudi Arabia and Qatar have only handed over 10 percent of their vast pledges.
The war between Israel, Hamas and other Islamist militants killed 2,000 Palestinians – mostly civilians – and left more than 100,000 seeking shelter by the August ceasefire. According to UNRWA, the UN's Agency for Palestine refugees, more than 9,000 homes in Gaza were destroyed and another 130,000 damaged.
Reconstruction began on the first Gaza home this summer, and according to the World Bank, 1.6 tons of construction material have entered Gaza since the war – 6.7 percent of the amount that will eventually be needed to rebuild the beleaguered enclave.
Credit: Annie Slemrod
Photo by: Shareef Sarhan/UNRWA