The New York Times · 6 August 1997

CP-1997-029

Caught in Crackdown, Arabs’ Hopes Lie in Ruins

By JOEL GREENBERG

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Transcribed from the clipping

AL ADEISA, West Bank, Aug. 5 — On a wind-scoured hill near Hebron this afternoon, Fayed Jaradat stood holding his child on the rubble of the house in which he awakened this morning.

It had taken less than four hours for two Israeli bulldozers to reduce the two-story stone structure to chunks of concrete and twisted iron rods, and now dozens of villagers, many of them boys, clambered among the debris. Men loaded a refrigerator and other household goods salvaged from the wreckage onto a pickup truck.

“Israel does not want peace in any way whatsoever,” said Mr. Jaradat, a 28-year-old stone worker and father of five. “They exploited the bombing in Jerusalem and did this without warning.” The destruction of Mr.

Jaradat’s house and two other homes in the Hebron area today were the latest in a series of a dozen demolitions of Arab homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since two suicide bombers killed 13 other people and wounded 170 in a Jerusalem market last Wednesday.

Israeli officials said the homes were destroyed because they were built without construction permits, but the officials acknowledge that the demolition campaign carries a political message.

“We are signaling the Palestinian Authority that they will not be able to resume normal life until they take certain measures to combat terrorism,” said a Defense Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The demolition policy is not new.

About 90 Arab homes have been torn down this year in the West Bank on the ground that they were built illegally in areas under Israeli control. More than 500 other homes are scheduled for destruction for the same reason, although these demolition orders have occasionally been suspended and then renewed for political reasons.

Now the green light has been given for demolitions, and there have been daily scenes of Israeli bulldozers gnawing into Arab houses under the stunned gaze of their evicted occupants. For Mr. Jaradat, the rude awakening came at 8:45 this morning, when Israeli military officials and police officers arrived at his home and told him they had come to tear it down.

“My wife was rolling up the bedclothes, and some of the children were still sleeping when they came and surrounded the house,” he recalled. “I asked if they were carrying a demolition order, and they said, ‘No — go to your lawyer.’ They told us to get out in a hurry, closed us up in a neighboring house and tossed out our belongings.

I watched the demolition from nearby. I felt hopeless.”

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