Destruction in Kumi Ori; Photo credit: Sraya Diamant/Flash90
Friday, July 10, 2020, 11:21 At dawn on Friday, July 10, border policemen broke into a home in the Kumi Ori neighborhood of Yitzhar, brutally removed the family – parents, their three children, one of them a two-month-old infant – and destroyed the house. The house had been rebuilt following destruction by security forces several months previously.
During the destruction, the father was detained, brutally according to eye witnesses. The mother said, “We finished rebuilding the house several hours before the police tried to break into it. After they didn’t succeed for a long time they very violently broke in and immediately lunged at my husband and told him that he was detained. There was pepper spray in the air, the children screamed and it was a big mess. Neighbors and friends who came to help us were brutally attacked by the policemen. The policemen didn’t present any warrant, not a demolition warrant and not any other warrant. Without any explanations they removed us from the house. Several hours later they destroyed the house. All of our belongings are thrown outside and destroyed now, the refrigerator, the crib, the couches.
“This destruction is a move towards the Trump Plan and building the Palestinian State. It is sad that policemen are destroying construction in the Land of Israel instead of encouraging Jewish communities in Yehuda and Shomron and advancement in Israel. G-d willing this neighborhood will prosper and our house and many more houses will be built here.”
The detainee will be brought to a deliberation at the Petah Tikva Magistrates Court where Honenu Attorney Adi Keidar will represent him. Keidar: “At dawn, policemen broke into my client’s private house without a warrant and brutally detained him in his own home. At a time of many security difficulties and a rising pandemic, the Israeli Police chose to arrive in large numbers and destroy Jewish construction on the hilltops of Yitzhar. It is regrettable that these are their priorities. We have not seen similar treatment of construction irregularities in the Bedouin or Arab sectors. We will demand my client’s release and an investigation of the policemen who participated in the incident.”
See here and here for previous posts about house destruction in Kumi Ori.