The Israeli army destroyed on Tuesday (May 23rd) in the occupied West Bank the home of a Palestinian perpetrator of an attack that killed one person in Tel Aviv in March, an AFP photographer found.
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Army forces and border guards destroyed last night in the village of Nilin the home of terrorist Motaz Khawaja, who had carried out a shooting attack on March 9, 2023 on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, after which one Israeli was killed and two others wounded, the army said in a statement.
Celebrated as a "martyr"
Originally from Nilin, a Palestinian town near the demarcation line between Israel and the West Bank and only about twenty kilometers from the center of Tel Aviv, Khawaja, aged 23 and a member of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' armed wing, was shot dead by a policeman after a chase after the attack. Questioned by AFP, the mayor of Nilin, Youssef Khawaja, said that the army had taken residents out of the three-storey building where the family of the perpetrator lived after midnight before demolishing the first-floor apartment at dawn.
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The army released a video showing soldiers planting explosives in the apartment at night before detonating them. An AFP photographer then observed the destruction of the interior walls of the apartment as well as the windows transformed into gaping openings. Inside the apartment and on the façade of the building hung posters on a green background glorifying Khawaja, celebrated as a "martyr". Clashes took place during the IDF operation in Nilin. The army claims to have dispersed "rioters". According to the mayor, three people were injured.
The Israeli authorities maintain that their policy of razing the homes of Palestinian perpetrators of murderous anti-Israel attacks, or making their homes uninhabitable, has a deterrent effect, a practice regularly criticized by human rights organizations as akin to collective punishment. "This heinous act (the destruction of the apartment, editor's note) will only strengthen our love of the homeland, (...) of Jerusalem and the (Muslim) religion, and with God's help, our roots will remain planted here," Salah Khawaja, Motaz Khawaja's father, told AFP.
