Netanyahu orders demolition of homes of Palestinian attackers

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday night instructed security officials to demolish the homes of Palestinians who perpetrated deadly attacks on Israelis, his office said in a statement.

The order on the use of the controversial punitive measure was made during a security discussion with Israel's defence leadership that was convened in Jerusalem after two stabbing attacks claimed the lives of two Israelis Monday, Xinhua reported.

Netanyahu ordered a series of steps to be taken against the Palestinians responsible for the killing, including increasing the number of security forces on the ground and moving forward on the demolition of terrorists' homes, said a statement by the Prime Minister's Office.

Earlier Monday, Israeli police officers arrested Nur a-Din Hashiya, a 25-year-old resident of the Askar refugee camp outside the city of Nablus in the West Bank, after he stabbed a soldier in a train station in Tel Aviv. The soldier later died of his wounds.

A few hours later, Maher Hashlamoun, a 30-year-old resident of the town of Hebron, stabbed and killed a 25-year-old Jewish woman near a settlement in the West Bank and injured two others.

For many years, Israel used house demolitions as punitive measure against relatives of Palestinians who harmed or allegedly harmed Israelis. Since the occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israeli security forces had demolished hundreds of homes.

However, in 2005 the military abandoned this policy, after the security establishment had found that the policy's drawbacks outweigh its benefits. The punitive measure was brought back to use by the government in July, after the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.