After two attacks in East Jerusalem, one of which killed seven people on Friday night, the Israeli security cabinet has announced measures that will strip “terrorist families” of certain rights.
The cabinet, which was urgently convened on Saturday evening after these attacks, “decided on a series of measures” to arrest […] Make terrorists and those who support them pay,” the official statement said.
The text announces the revocation of social security rights for “families of terrorists who support terrorism” as well as Sunday’s discussion in the Council of Ministers of a bill aimed at stripping “the Israeli identity cards” of this same category of families.
Opening the cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged a “strong” and “swift” response to the Palestinian attacks of the past two days.
The announced measures are in line with proposals from his far-right political partners, which allowed him to return to power after last month’s general elections at the end of December.
They probably primarily apply to Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (Israeli Arabs, after the Israeli name) and Palestinians with the status of residents of East Jerusalem (part of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel), and give them a number of rights and duties identical to those of the Israelis.
The Security Cabinet deplored the scenes of jubilation that greeted the announcement of the murder, committed Friday night by a Palestinian man who shot dead seven people near a synagogue in a Jewish-settled neighborhood in east Jerusalem, in several Palestinian cities in several Palestinian cities, and agreed also on “measures taken to strengthen the settlements presented this week,” the press release adds without further detail.
Jewish colonization in the West Bank is considered illegal by the UN, which continues to call for its termination in vain.