Israeli PM touts further punitive measures against families of Palestinian attackers

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel is looking for further measures against families of Palestinian attackers, as a six-month wave of violence persists.

Netanyahu told a weekly cabinet meeting that authorities are looking into expelling families of Palestinian attackers who carried out shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis from one area to another in the West Bank, and into the Gaza Strip.

"I expect an answer from the Attorney General to my query regarding the expulsion of terrorists' families to Gaza," Netanyahu said on Sunday, according to a statement from his office.

"At the same time, we are studying moving the residences of terrorists' families within Judea and Samaria," Netanyahu added, using the Jewish biblical names for the West Bank territories, lands Israel occupied, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, during the 1967 Mideast War.

Israeli authorities have in recent months demolished the homes of several Palestinian attackers in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem, in a move aimed to deter Palestinians from carrying out attacks.

However, the measure was criticized to be means of collective punishment by human rights groups, and Israeli security officials doubted the method's effectiveness, in a report dating back to 2005.

The measures come as the wave of unrest, which have seen the deaths of 28 Israelis and more than 175 Palestinians since early October, persists.

The latest attacks occurred on Friday. First, a 29-year-old Israeli was stabbed and lightly wounded by a Palestinian youth, arrested by Israeli security forces. Later on that day, two Israeli soldiers were shot and lightly wounded in a major West Bank, near Ramallah, while the perpetrator managed to escape.

Other than discussing the punishments at hand, Netanyahu also said authorities are continuing to battle "incitement to violence" on Palestinian media outlets, referring mostly to radio stations.

Israeli leaders blame the Palestinian Authority and media outlets for incitement to violence as the sources of the wave of unrest, which Palestinians say is due to the 49 years of Israeli occupation of lands where the Palestinians wish to establish their own state.

On a related matter, the Israeli military announced on Sunday that in a joint operation with the Israeli Shin Bet security agency, 15 improvised rifles were found west of Jenin in the West Bank.

According to a statement by the military spokesperson, the improvised weapons were uncovered "as part of extensive efforts by security forces in the past few months in the West Bank to uncover improvised weapons used to target security forces and civilians.

According to the military, 68 shooting attacks took place in the West Bank and Jerusalem area in recent months.

Also on Sunday's cabinet meeting, Netanyahu discussed the recent fire exchange that took place over the weekend between the Israeli military and the Gaza Strip.

After four rockets were launched towards Israel on Friday night, the Israeli Air Force struck targets in Gaza, resulting in the deaths of two Palestinian siblings, aged 4 and 10.

"Israel will not accept rocket fire of any kind from the strip at its territory," Netanyahu said on Sunday. "Israel holds Hamas responsible for all firing carried out from the Gaza Strip towards Israel. Hamas must prevent such firing," he added.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon told Israel Radio earlier on Sunday that the security establishment believes the rocket fire was carried out by an Islamist Salafist group rather than Hamas, as was the case in several other rocket attacks in the past several months

More than 2,200 Palestinians and 70 Israelis were killed in the 2014 Summer Israeli military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas took over the enclave in 2007, which has been a battle ground several times in recent years between Israel and Hamas. Endit