Punitive Demolition

The legal basis is Regulation 119 of the Defence (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, promulgated by the British to suppress the Palestinian revolt and retained by Israel after 1948. It empowers a military commander to order the forfeiture and demolition of any house whose inhabitants he suspects of committing an offence involving violence — a power that reaches, on its face, everyone living under the same roof. In practice it has been used almost exclusively against the families of Palestinians accused of attacks on Israelis, and its declared purpose is deterrence rather than punishment for anything the residents themselves have done.

The distinction from other demolitions matters for anyone reading the statistics. Israel demolishes Palestinian structures for three separate reasons: because they were built without permits that are systematically refused, chiefly in Area C of the West Bank and East Jerusalem; in the course of military operations; and punitively under Regulation 119. Administrative demolitions are by far the most numerous, and the UN’s humanitarian monitors publish a running record of structures destroyed and people displaced by each category, month by month.

Punitive demolition typically follows within weeks of an attack. Soldiers seal off the building, the family is given a short period to remove possessions, and the apartment is destroyed by explosives or engineering equipment — often damaging neighbouring flats, whose residents have no connection to the case at all. Israel’s Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to prohibit the practice, treating it as a security measure within the military commander’s discretion, though individual justices have dissented and the court has sometimes narrowed particular orders. The practice was suspended in 2005 after a military committee concluded it was counterproductive, and resumed in 2014.

Human rights organisations, and the Israeli committee that recommended suspension, have made the same objection from different directions: as a matter of law, the deliberate destruction of the property of people not accused of any offence is collective punishment, prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention; as a matter of fact, there is no reliable evidence that it deters. Human Rights Watch’s 2021 survey of Israeli policy treats it alongside residency revocation and permit denial as part of a body of measures applied to Palestinians and to no one else.

Sources

• Data on demolition and displacement in the West Bank — UN OCHA occupied Palestinian territory
• A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution — Human Rights Watch, 2021