On the last day of August Israel Defense Forces carried out 15 raids on various communities in the West Bank. This was reported by the PLO’s negotiation affairs department on the basis of reports by the Palestinian security forces.

Such raids are routine and on that day too they ended with arrests, clashes with residents here and there, entry into residents' homes and orders to show up at the offices of the Shin Bet security service.

One raid, in Jenin’s Al-Hadaf neighborhood, was different. The large number of military vehicles, troops and special police commandos, as well as the addition of two bulldozers, indicated that the forces were planning to arrest a “bigtime” fugitive and expected him to resist the arrest.

Indeed, according to the IDF spokesman’s announcement, the target was a “senior Hamas figure.” At about 10 P.M. the troops surrounded a house that belonged to Majdi Abu al-Hija. Eleven family members, including six children, were ordered to come out and were held as detainees in a neighbor’s house.

Aalia Abu Al-Hija and her mother–in–law begged in vain to allow them to enter their house and serve as a “human shield” for the soldiers, to prove that no one was hiding in it. Nobody had fired at the surrounding forces from the house. Despite this, the family members said, the soldiers fired several missiles at the house, pausing at intervals to enable the fugitive who was not there to emerge. In the morning the bulldozers completed the demolition of the house, in keeping with “the considerations of all the security officials,” as the Shin Bet statement said.

One is left with the impression that the original plan to capture a fugitive dead or alive went wrong and was replaced by plan B – to tear down the house. The more the Shin Bet tries to obfuscate that, the more it appears that a mistake had been made. After all, the head of the family who was arrested wasn’t questioned and was released two days later. A police commando was wounded by a shot fired by a colleague and the security forces admit that that raid did not produce any wanted man.

The insistence on tearing down the house, despite the uncertainty of whether the fugitive was in it or not, reflects the unacceptable, cavalier attitude of the security forces in using disproportionate violence against Palestinian civilians in the territories. The speed with which it is possible to destroy a Palestinian house shows the true state of anarchy in the areas beyond the Green Line.

The police, IDF and Shin Bet must investigate the event in view of the clear failure it demonstrates. The time that has elapsed only strengthens the suspicion that the fugitive wasn’t there at all and that the house was demolished for nothing.