No, Punitive House Demolition Does Not Reduce Suicide Bombing: Revisiting Evidence from the Second Intifada

ABSTRACT

Punitive house demolitions were intensified by the Israeli government during the Second Intifada with the intent of curbing suicide bombings. Using econometric analysis, Benmelech et al. (2015) suggest that this policy is effective, citing deterrence as the driving factor. In 2014, the Israeli Supreme Court relied on the findings of an earlier draft of the Benmelech paper to reject a petition against the resumption of punitive housing demolition. In this research, I show that the Benmelech findings are spurious due to misspecified modelling and that the reported effect of punitive house demolition camouflages confounding factors. I also show that among the multiple security measures put in place during the Second Intifada, arrest campaigns did negatively impacted suicide bombings. I provide suggestive evidence that explains individual motives for suicide bombings and why punitive house demolition lacks a deterrence effect. The motives are likely related to the aggravation of grievances from excessive state oppression, willingness to exact revenge, and the glorification of self-sacrifice and martyrdom in asymmetric conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• Punitive house demolition
• suicide attacks
• deterrence
• grievance
• revenge

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• F5
• K4
• I0

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Rose Olfert, Nur Arafeh, Sameh Hallaq, Ayhab Saad, Massimaliano Cali, Luca Tiberti, Yousef Daoud, Mouin Rabbani, Ala Tartir, Ibrahim Shikaki, and Mohammad Samhouri and anonymous reviewers for the useful comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Indiscriminate counterinsurgency measures are often perceived as unfair and generate moral-outrage, motivate dissent, accumulate grievances within localities where insurgents operate, and create more support for militants (Kocher, Pepinsky, and Kalyvas 2011; Toft and Zhukov 2011; Kress and Szechtman 2009)

2. In the following discussion, I use ‘the authors’ and Benmelech et al (2015) interchangeably.

3. Benmelech et al (2015), also tested the effect of ‘precautionary’ house demolition on the extent of suicide bombings committed by Palestinians during the Second Intifada. The Israeli army used this measure in 2004 to indiscriminately erase houses in an attempt to prevent attacks by clearing areas used by Palestinian militants to fire shells at Israeli targets. As documented by Benmelech et al (2015), the Israeli army razzed 1172 houses (1421 housing units) primarily in Rafah area along the Egyptian border and close to army posts, in the Northern Gaza Strip, and where Israeli settlements were located before the Israel government vacated them in 2005. The occupants of these houses (10778 individuals) are innocent civilians and were not suspected of any offensive act (Shnayderman 2005). Benmelech et al (2015) show that the rise in the number of ‘precautionary’ demolitions backfired as the frequency of suicide attacks increased.

4. Source of data is United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – occupied Palestinian territory| Data on demolition and displacement in the West Bank. (n.d.). United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – Occupied Palestinian Territory. https://www.ochaopt.org/data/demolition.

5. The supplementary material of Benmelech et al (2015), including the data set and stata codes (do file), are posted on the personal website of Esteban F. Klor (http://pluto.huji.ac.il/∼eklor/HD_data).

6. Harel, A. (2005) IDF panel recommends ending punitive house demolitions for terrorists’ families – Haaretz Com. Available at: https://www.haaretz.com/2005-02-17/ty-article/idf-panel-recommends-ending-punitive-house-demolitions-for-terrorists-families/0000017f-da82-dc0c-afff-dbdb4dcf0000.

7. The Emergency Defense Regulations of 1945 were implemented by the acting British Commissioner for Palestine based on Section 6 of the Palestine (Defense) Order in Council. See Palestine Gazette, No. 675, Supp. No. 2, 24 March 1937, p. 267. Section of Regulation 119 states that ‘a Military Commander may by order direct the forfeiture to the Government of Palestine of any house, structure, or land from which he has reason to suspect that any firearm has been illegally discharged, or any bomb, grenade or explosive or incendiary article illegally thrown, or of any house, structure or land situated in any area, town, village, quarter or street the inhabitants or some of the inhabitants of which he is satisfied to have committed, or attempted to commit, or abetted the commission of, or been accessories after the fact to the commission of, any offense against these Regulations involving violence or intimidation or any Military Court offense; and when any house, structure or land is forfeited as aforesaid, the Military Commander may destroy the house or the structure or anything on growing on the land’.

8. House demolition has never been implemented against Israeli civilians who committed acts that warrant such a punishment (Shnayderman 2005).

9. See Section 14 Israeli Supreme Court response, HCJ 7473/02. https://hamoked.org/files/2014/1159002_eng.pdf.

10. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that ‘No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.’ See ICRC Database, Treaties, States Parties and Commentaries, Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949., Article 33 - Individual responsibility, collective penalties, pillage, reprisals, https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-33.

11. ICRC Database, Treaties, States Parties and Commentaries, Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949., Commentary of 01.01.1958, Article 53 - Prohibited destruction, https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-53/commentary/1958.

12. See Petition HCJ8091/14 submitted to the Israeli Supreme Court. https://hamoked.org/files/2014/1159000_eng.pdf.

13. ICRC, Commentary on the Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, Par. 152, p. 67.

14. Opponents of punitive house demolition further argue that the policy of punitive house demolition is discriminatory as this policy only applies to Palestinians and not to Jews involved in similar conduct. The Israeli Supreme Court rejects this argument indicating that the scale of attacks by the latter does not necessitate deterrence (see Ronen and Telman 2015).

15. Israel: Stop Punitive Home Demolitions (2020). Available at: https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/11/21/israel-stop-punitive-home-demolitions.

16. Benmelech, E. and Berrebi, C., 2007. Human capital and the productivity of suicide bombers. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(3), pp.223-238.

17. http://cda.gov.ps/index.php/en/.

18. The construct of all variables in model (1) are specified in the STATA do file of Benmelech et al (2015).

19. The replicated estimates of Benmelech et al (2015) are reported in appendix II.

20. I replicated the findings of Benmelech et al (2015) using their own stata codes.

21. Benmelech et al. (2015) do not state in their locality level analysis that punitive house demolition is measured at the district level. The construct of all variables is available in their stata do file.

22. Unlike all other models, stata’s do file of Benmelech et al (2015) do not include the codes of the negative binomial regressions.

23. To save space, I do not reproduce the dynamic and geographic effect of punitive house demolition, which are respectively reported in Table (A.8) and (A.9) in the online appendix of Benmelech et al (2015).

24. Aderet, O. (2020) The killing of the terrorist with nine lives changed the course of the second intifada – Israel News. Available at: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-09-29/ty-article/.premium/the-death-of-the-terrorist-with-nine-lives-changed-the-course-of-the-second-intifada/0000017f-da76-dea8-a77f-de763fdd0001.

25. Harel, A. and Arnon Regular, Uri Ash Haaretz Service, Agencies (2004) Security forces on heightened terror alert – Haaretz Com. Available at: https://www.haaretz.com/2004-03-22/ty-article/security-forces-on-heightened-terror-alert/0000017f-e881-dc7e-adff-f8ad8ddc0000.

26. See Jones (2007) for more discussion on the Operation Defensive Shield.

27. See Jones (2007).

28. See Esposito (2005) for more discussion on the Israeli induced operation during the Second Intifada.

29. Out of the total length of the separation wall, about twenty percent of the barrier’s route is planned to run along the border between the West Bank and the Green Line (1949 armistice line). Lein (2006) argues that while the official purpose of constructing the wall was to prevent attacks, the route of the wall is designed in a fashion that enables the expansion of Israeli settlement in the West Bank. On July 9^th of 2004, The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion asserting that the building of the separation wall is illegal and must stop and that Israel should make reparation for any related damages: https://news.un.org/en/story/2004/07/108912.

30. See Amnesty International (2001) ‘Israel and the Occupied Territories: Broken Lives – a year of Intifada’. Index Number: MDE 15/083/2001. Accesses online on October 21, 2022. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/083/2001/en/.

31. The Israeli army has used targeted killing to serve multiple objectives including preemption, revenge, and retribution. During the Second Intifada the Israel army conducted 191 successful targeted killing using various methods including shooting from close range, air missiles, and explosive devices. Available data shows that about 75% of the targeted killings were carried out against operatives or low rank militants as opposed to the rest who were either military leaders or political/ideological leaders.

32. See Santos Silva and Tenreyro (2010) for more discussion on the sensitivity of estimating Poisson models.

33. The findings are not reported to save space, but available on request from the author.

34. Jerusalem Media and Communication Center, Poll No.31 Part I, March 1999 and Poll 39 Part II, December 2000. http://www.jmcc.org/polls.aspx.

35. The data that Brym and Araj (2006) used are obtained from multiple sources including: the wills and recorded statements of the suicide bombers; online database of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) in Herzliya, Israel; the website of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the East Coast evening edition of the New York Times; and two authoritative Arabic newspapers – al-Quds, published in Jerusalem, and al-Quds al-A rabi, published in London.

36. Other studies traced avenge actions prior to the Second Intifada (De Figueiredo and Weingast 2000; Weinberg, Pedahzur, and Canetti-Nisim 2003). For example, De Figueiredo and Weingast (2000) suggest that the suicide bombing attacks in the 1990’s were provoked by the Hebron Massacre by Baruch Goldstein in 1994 and the assassination of Yahya Ayyash (Hamas military leader and bomb maker) in 1996.