On Sunday, Israel sealed off the home of an east Jerusalem 21-year-old terrorist who killed seven people and wounded three outside a synagogue on Friday night during the Shabbat, in a preliminary step ahead of the expected demolition of the building.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet approved an order to seal the home of a second Palestinian shooter – a 13-year-old boy who wounded two Israeli men in east Jerusalem on Saturday. His Cabinet also took steps toward approving other punitive measures against the families of Palestinian terrorists, including potentially stripping them of citizenship rights and deporting them to the occupied West Bank. Such moves have been condemned by human rights groups as collective punishment.
Israeli police released footage of Israeli army engineers welding metal plates over the windows of the home of the first shooter and welding the front door shut.
Police said the first terrorist, identified as 21-year-old east Jerusalem man Khairy Alqam, was killed in a shootout with officers Friday night after fleeing the scene in the predominantly ultra-Orthodox east Jerusalem settlement of Neve Yaakov.
Relatives said Alqam's grandfather was killed in a 1998 stabbing in Jerusalem. The killing remains unsolved, but a Jewish suspect was arrested in 2010 in connection with a string of attacks on Palestinians. He was released and charges were not pressed. The suspect in the 2010 arrest was assisted by Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is now Israel's national security minister. At the time, Ben-Gvir was a far-Right activist who accompanied the suspect to court.
Musa Alqam, the gunman's father, said he had no idea if his son had been motivated by revenge. "I don't know how he planned what he did," he said.
More funerals for the victims of Friday's shooting, the deadliest attack on Israelis since 2008, were scheduled to take place Sunday.
