ANOTHER HOME IN WEST BANK JEWISH COMMUNITY DESTROYED BY GOVERNMENT

Israeljustice.com

  JERUSALEM -- Israeli security forces have destroyed another home in a West Bank Jewish community, implementing the government's destruction orders that were served during the building freeze that ended in September.  
    In the early hours of Dec. 15, about 100 special police officers [Yasam] and security forces, including border police, entered the eastern Gush Etzion settlement of Tekos in the Judean desert and destroyed the home of Yigal and Maya Carlebach and their newborn son.  
    "Since the beginning of the freeze, civil administration [the IDF] officials came to our neighborhood and distributed destruction orders to every [Jewish] home that had been built within the last two years," Matanya Stein, a Tekoa Daled resident said. "About 400 meters from here there is an Arab house which has destruction orders pending on it for years."  
    Stein also said that Tekoa Daled, the furthermost neighborhood in Tekoa, was built entirely on either State land or land that the State had not yet officially claimed but Palestinians laid no claim to it.  
    Yativ Leuchter, another Tekoa Daled resident, 25, said the Carlebachs, in their early twenties, were sleeping when Maya heard loud banging at the door at about 4.00 am.  
    "The wife thought that it could be terrorists so she grabbed the weapon [M-16 rifle] and went to the door," Leuchter said. "She heard them say it's the police and to open up. 'We have come to destroy your home,' they said. She asked for 10 minutes but meanwhile eight Arabs entered the house with cartons to pack up the contents of the house. This took about one and half hours and at about 5.30 [am], they bulldozed the house [with a D9 bulldozer]."  
    Leuchter said that the police had ringed the home and cordoned off the entire area. Leuchter also said that security forces were accompanied by a photographer from the ultra-left-wing human rights organization B'Zelem. B'Zelem is funded by American and European money.  
    "All the neighbors came to help but no one could break through," Leuchter said. "Every time, we pushed forward, they pushed us back and one person was arrested. He managed to get through but he was immediately handcuffed and shoved in to the paddy wagon. Police also dragged the grandmother from the house."
 
    The stone home which was built by Yigal and friends took more than a year and a half to complete but Yigal said he didn't know why his house was selected for destruction.  
    "I didn't know they were coming and I don't know why," Yigal said.  
    This is the second house destruction in Gush Etzion in as many months. A home in the community of Bat Ayin was destroyed about two months ago in what also appeared to be an arbitary selection of a home in the furthermost neighborhood of the Judean mountains community. Neither Gush Etzion Council Mayor Shaul Goldstein council nor any other council officials could be reached for comment.