Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Zipori claimed today that his former chief, Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, was solely responsible for the collective punishment of two West Bank Arab families last month because one member of each family allegedly was involved in the stoning of cars in which Israeli officials were riding. Weizman resigned on May 26 over basic differences with the Likud-led government.
The families were removed from their homes and relocated in a deserted refugee camp near Jericho where minimal facilities were lacking. The incident raised strong protests in Israel and abroad and the families were subsequently returned to their homes on Weizman’s orders.
COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT NOT IDEAL
Zipori who was reappointed to his post after Weizman quit, testified before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee on the issue of collective punishment. He said that normally, an expulsion order required the Premier’s approval before it was carried out but in the case of the two families, the Defense Minister acted on his own because they were not being deported from Israel controlled territory.
Zipori conceded that collective punishment, such as the imposition of curfews, was not the ideal way to keep order in the territories but there were instances when it was the only means available short of force. MKs Amnon Rubinstein of the Shai faction and Yossi Sarid of the Labor Party maintained that collective punishment was unjust and ineffective.
They referred to the 24-hour curfew imposed on the West Bank Arab town of Hebron after the ambush killings of six yeshiva students there on May 2. The curfew lasted 12 days and is still in force during the night-time hours. Haim Druckman, a National Religious Party MK, insisted on the other hand that collective punishment was necessary in Hebron. He claimed that most of the Arab population knew in advance that an ambush was planned and stocked up with food before the attack in preparation for the curfew.
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