A Palestinian is checked by Israeli soldiers at a bus station at the Gush Etzion junction on the main road between Jerusalem and Hebron yesterday.

Agencies
Tel Aviv


Israeli security forces have killed Palestinian attackers even when the latter no longer pose a threat, an Israeli human rights group charged yesterday.
Israel has a “shoot-to-kill policy, which has also been used against people who have already been ‘neutralised’,” charged Hagai El-Ad, the executive director of B’Tselem.
“Spurred by senior (right-wing) politicians and backed by the prime minister and the weak lip-service paid by the attorney general, soldiers and police officers have become judge, jury and executioner,” he said in a statement.
Violence since the start of October has left 103 dead on the Palestinian side, including an Arab Israeli, as well as 17 Israelis, an American and an Eritrean.
Israel says the vast majority of Palestinians killed are attackers, who were shot in 124 stabbings, shootings and car rammings against Israeli security forces or civilian bystanders.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld rejected the B’Tselem accusation, insisting officers only shoot to kill when lives are in danger.
“Each attack is different,” he said. “When our police officers can arrest the suspect, the suspects are arrested, but in cases where our police officers are in an immediate life threatening situation ...  they shoot the terrorists.”  
“Any police officer across the world or in Europe or in the (US) that would be in the same situation would respond in exactly the same way,” he said.
“There is no order to shoot and kill. There is an order to remove the threat,” said a senior Israeli military official on condition of anonymity.
B’Tselem also condemned collective punishment and home demolitions of the families of attackers.
Israel yesterday demolished the home of a Palestinian who carried out a deadly car-ramming attack last year, sparking clashes in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood where the operation occurred.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported a number of injuries without providing details.
Hundreds of Israeli soldiers and police had deployed in the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem ahead of the demolition and police later distributed an aerial photo of smoke rising above the building.
Such demolitions, heavily criticised by rights groups, have regularly resulted in clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians.  
The home was the residence of Ibrahim al-Akari, who carried out a car-ramming attack on November 5, 2014, killing two people, including a border police officer, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.
The 38-year-old drove his van into a group of police officers before ramming into pedestrians at a tram stop along a road separating East and West Jerusalem.  
He then jumped out of his vehicle and attacked bystanders with an iron bar before being shot dead by police.
Israel says such demolitions act as a deterrent to potential attackers, while rights groups and Palestinians say it amounts to collective punishment, forcing family members to suffer for acts committed by someone else.
The United States has urged Israel not to use demolitions as a punitive measure, calling them “counter-productive in an already tense situation.”