The Israeli government has been demolishing houses in East Jerusalem and across the West Bank and Gaza Strip since it commenced its belligerent occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967. There are three main types of house demolitions: operation, administrative and punitive. The last type is not only the most barbaric from a moral point of view but more importantly, from a legal perspective, constitutes collective punishment in the form of property destruction and generates some of the gravest violations of international humanitarian law, constituting a war crime when amounting to intentional and systematic “wanton destruction”. Administrative demolition of homes in…