Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian today who they said drove a car into officers guarding the demolition of the Jerusalem home of a Palestinian who killed three Israelis in a bulldozer rampage last July.
It was the first such demolition since a military commission said in 2005 that destroying a Palestinian attacker's home was an ineffective deterrent against future strikes on Israelis.
"It is an important punitive step. We must ensure such measures are taken in the future and carried out in a much shorter timeframe," Defence Minister Ehud Barak told reporters.
A police spokesman said paramilitary border police who set up a roadblock in Arab East Jerusalem's Sur Bahir neighbourhood, where the demolition took place, shot and killed a "terrorist" who drove into them. He said three policemen were hurt.
Sur Bahir's mayor, Zuhair Hamdan, accused police of killing the motorist, identified by a relative as Iyad Azmi Owisat, in cold blood, but said he had not witnessed the incident.
After the shooting, several dozen Palestinians threw rocks at police, who responded with tear gas. A policeman and a protester were injured, medical officials said.
The home belonged to the family of Husam Dweiyat.
In a July 2 attack, he rammed a bulldozer into a commuter bus, cars and pedestrians on Jerusalem's busy Jaffa Road, killing three people and wounding 20.
Police and passers-by shot the 30-year-old dead.
Police called it a "terrorist attack". Hussein Ghanyem, a lawyer for Dweiyat's family, said the bulldozer driver suffered from mental illness, a condition he said had been certified by a court during a criminal case against him in 2000.
Last month, Dweiyat's parents lost an appeal in Israel's Supreme Court against an order to demolish the part of their home where their son had lived.
A crane with a steel claw tore into the stone home's top floor, sending rubble crashing to the ground as police clutching assault rifles kept onlookers away. Other sections of the dwelling were left untouched.
Human rights groups say demolitions are collective punishment but Israeli leaders say they are needed in response to attacks by Palestinians from East Jerusalem, who have greater freedom of movement than brethren in the West Bank.
Reuters