Israel proposes action after Palestinian’s attack

JERUSALEM (AP) — A day after a Palestinian construction worker’s deadly rampage in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday called for reviving the practice of demolishing the homes of attackers’ families, and his chief deputy proposed cutting some Arab neighborhoods off from the rest of the city.

Israeli Jews expressed anxiety about security, and Palestinians wondered what the violence will mean for their already tenuous position in society.

A day earlier, a Palestinian drove a huge earth-moving vehicle over cars and into buses, killing three Israelis and leaving a swath of wreckage on a main Jerusalem street before security forces shot him to death.

The attacker, Hussam Dwayat, 30, of east Jerusalem, had no problem moving around the Jewish part of Jerusalem. After Israel captured the Arab section of the city in the 1967 war, it gave residency and Israeli ID cards to the Arabs who lived there, giving them freedom of movement around Israel.

The attack brought calls to reconsider benefits the 250,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem receive from the Israeli government.

“I think we have to be tougher in part of the measures that we take against terrorists, especially terrorists who are part of our internal fabric of life,” Olmert told an economic conference at the Red Sea resort of Eilat. “If we have to demolish houses, we will demolish houses.”