The Israeli army demolished on Wednesday the home of a Palestinian accused of carrying out a stabbing and shooting attack that killed an Israeli earlier this year, the military said.
On July 10, two attackers killed 22-year-old Shalev Zvuluny in a shopping area near Jerusalem, before the Israeli army shot them dead.
On Wednesday, Israeli army bulldozers entered the village of Bazzaryah in the occupied West Bank, destroying the family home of one of the attackers after it had been evacuated.
Israeli forces ‘demolished the home of the terrorist who carried out the shooting and stabbing attack at the Gush junction, during which Shalev Zvuluny was murdered’, the army said in a statement.
Hazem Yassine, head of the Bazzaryah municipal council, denounced what he called a ‘heinous crime’.
He said that Israeli forces had sealed off the village’s entrances since dawn in preparation for the demolition.
‘Schools were closed as a precaution,’ he said, adding that the assailant’s family had moved out around a month ago after being notified of the decision to demolish the house.
An AFP photographer saw children climbing on piles of rubble after the demolition, waving the Palestinian flag.
Israel, whose army has occupied the West Bank since 1967, regularly demolishes the homes of Palestinians accused of carrying out deadly attacks against Israelis.
The government defends the deterrent effect of these demolitions, but critics denounce the practice as a form of collective punishment that leaves families homeless.
Violence in the West Bank surged during the war in Gaza, which erupted on October 7, 2023 with Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Since then, Israeli soldiers or settlers have killed more than a thousand Palestinians in the West Bank, many of them militants but also including civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian Authority data.
At the same time, according to official Israeli figures, at least 44 Israelis, including civilians and soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military raids in the area.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army said Wednesday that it had identified a Hamas financial official it killed two weeks ago in a strike in the Gaza Strip.
Abdel Hay Zaqut, a financial official in Hamas’s armed wing, on December 13 in the same strike that killed military commander Raed Saad.
The Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, said on Wednesday that Zaqut was killed while he was in a vehicle alongside Raed Saad in ‘a joint operation by the Israeli army and the Shin Bet’, Israel’s internal security agency.
Zaqut ‘belonged to the financial department of the armed wing’ of Hamas, Adraee wrote on X.
‘Over the past year, Zaqut was responsible for collecting and transferring tens of millions of dollars to Hamas’s armed wing with the aim of continuing the fight against the State of Israel,’ he said.
Hamas’s leader for the Gaza Strip, Khalil al-Hayya, confirmed on December 14 the death of Raed Saad and ‘his companions’, though he did not name Zaqut.
The Israeli army said Saad headed the weapons production headquarters of Hamas’s military wing and oversaw the group’s build-up of capabilities.
Since October 10, a fragile truce has been in force in the Gaza Strip, although Israel and Hamas accuse each other of violations.
The war began with Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed more than 70,000 people in the Gaza Strip, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, a figure the UN deems is credible.
