JERUSALEM (JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces demolished the home of Islam Yousef Abu Hamid for the second time on Thursday, after his family rebuilt it following the original demolition in December 2018.
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Abu Hamid was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2019 by an Israeli military court for the murder of IDF St. Sgt. Ronen Lubarsky in Samaria.
“Recently, the IDF spotted that rebuilding was taking place at the location,” the army said in a statement, according to a report in the Times of Israel. The funding for the reconstruction of the home was provided by the Palestinian Authority, according to the report, which said on Thursday it would pay to once again rebuild the family home.
Israeli troops blocked the roads leading to the house, located in Ramallah’s al-Am’ari refugee camp, and evacuated the homes and streets in the vicinity prior to beginning the demolition. The Israeli soldiers were met with violent rioting by local residents, who threw firebombs and rocks at them, according to the military. No Israeli casualties were reported.
Several suspected members of the Hamas terrorist group were arrested during the incident, according to the IDF, while Palestinian media sources reported that a few young Palestinians were lightly injured during the riots.
Lubarsky, a member of an elite IDF counter-terrorism unit, was killed when Abu Hamid dropped a heavy stone slab on his head from the third floor of a building during a raid in the refugee camp on May 24, 2018. Lubarsky was critically injured and died two days later in hospital.
According to the IDF, the house had been built on a plot of land upon which a home belonging to Hamid’s brother once stood, before it, too, was demolished due to his participation in an attack which killed Shin Bet operative Noam Cohen in the 1990s.
The family was subsequently ordered not to rebuild the structure, according to the military.