An Evangelical leader in the Palestinian communities has disputed a story from October in which Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations presented a diagram claiming Palestinian children are taught lessons such as “how to stab a Jew”.
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Controversy also broke out on Sunday over an allegation by Litman’s wife that a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance stopped at the scene but did not help the wounded.
The military said the main suspect “associated himself with involvement in the attack” and that security forces located the weapon and vehicle used to carry it out.
The army said no Israeli soldiers were wounded.
The demolitions came hours after two Israelis were shot dead in an apparent ambush near the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron on Friday in the most serious attack on Israelis in almost a month.
Palestinians say Israel’s attempt to link their liberation struggle and the Paris attacks is cynical and misleading, and seeks to shield Israel from the condemnation it deserves for 48 years of military occupation.
Three of the homes, situated in Nablus in the West Bank, belong to the families of the attackers responsible for the West Bank shooting attack on October 1, in which a Jewish couple was killed.
The Israeli military claimed in a statement that troops had come under attack during the operation to destroy the home of Muhammad Abu Shaheen, who shot dead Danny Gonen in the West Bank in June. He said there would have been more Israeli deaths if not for Israel’s aggressive policies “to control the ground, go into the villages, demolish terrorists’ homes and take preventive action against the infrastructures of terrorism”. Armed fighters from the al-Aqsa martyrs’ brigades, linked to president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah, with which one of those killed was affiliated, joined the crowd.
Israel has razed the homes of four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank blamed for attacking Israelis, the army has said, its latest punitive demolition after weeks of deadly unrest.
After the troops arrived, hundreds of Palestinians gathered and many threw firebombs and rocks as the Israeli forces demolished the home.
In other developments Friday, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced his return to the hard world of Mideast diplomacy, saying he was launching a new initiative to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace as a private citizen.
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“We are not to blame for the terrorism directed against us, just as the French are not to blame for the terrorism directed against them”, Netanyahu said. Israeli security forces said his father and brother turned him in, fearing that their home would be razed.
