JERUSALEM — On almost any given day, somewhere in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, the ritual begins with Israeli soldiers knocking on the door. A Palestinian family snatches up a few possessions before being herded out into the predawn chill, then sappers painstakingly fit explosives to walls and foundations.
And with a puff of smoke, a groan of twisted metal and the crash of concrete, down comes the house.
Since the early days of Israel's bitter struggle with the Palestinians, knocking down or blowing up family homes has been a familiar tactic, dating from the days of the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in the late 1980s.
But never before have home demolitions been carried out at such an intense pace, or in a manner that has raised such thorny questions of logic and legality.
In the past six months, Israeli troops have methodically destroyed the homes of more than 150 Palestinians accused of having taken part in attacks against Israelis -- bombers who board crowded buses and blow themselves and as many passengers as possible to pieces, gunmen who burst into Israeli families' homes in Jewish settlements or border communities or lie in ambush at lonely roadsides, and the array of planners, paymasters and weapons procurers.
When Israeli troops arrive to blow up a Palestinian house, the perpetrators and their accomplices are no longer the target; they are already dead, or in jail, or on the run. Instead, home demolition is a form of retribution aimed solely at the families, whether or not they knew beforehand of the attack.
"Basically, you are penalizing people who didn't do anything, and depriving them of even the minimal judicial process that had existed before," said Yael Stein of the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. "It's so very wrong."
On a cold, drizzly afternoon in East Jerusalem last month, 75-year-old Moussa Abassi, rheumy-eyed and leaning hard on a wooden cane, looked on as an earthmover knocked big chunks of concrete from a hillside home that had housed three generations of his family.
His grandson, Wissam Abassi, was convicted of helping carry out a string of bombings in Jerusalem, including an attack at Hebrew University that killed seven people, five of whom were U.S. citizens. Weeks after the younger Abassi was sentenced to multiple life terms, Israeli soldiers arrived to destroy the house where he had lived with his wife and 10-month-old daughter.
