Minister nixes residency for family of Jerusalem truck terrorist

Interior Minister Aryeh Deri has ordered his office to revoke the residency of 10 relatives of the Palestinian terrorist who earlier this month killed four soldiers in a truck-ramming attack in Jerusalem.

Deri said in a statement Wednesday that, after holding hearings for the relatives and consulting with security officials, he had decided that the family members of Fadi al-Qunbar, most of which reside in East Jerusalem, would lose their special status as Israeli residents.

“Only immediate and practical actions will deter assailants,” Deri said.

There was no immediate word as to whether Qunbar’s mother, whose residency was among those considered for annulment, was among the 10.

The Haaretz newspaper has noted that previous attempts to revoke the Israeli residency of East Jerusalem residents as a punitive measure have been shot down by the High Court of Justice.

Qunbar, a resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber, plowed a truck into a group of soldiers in Jerusalem on January 8.

The attacked killed Lt. Yael Yekutiel, 20, of Givatayim; Lt. Shir Hajaj, 22, of Ma’ale Adumim; 2nd Lt. Erez Orbach, 20, of Alon Shvut; and 2nd Lt. Shira Tzur, 20, of Haifa.

“We must fight with all our strength and by any deterrent means in order to prevent the next terror attack,” Deri said when he launched the annulment process. “From now on terrorists considering an attack will know that their families will pay a price for their actions.”

The Shas party leader and interior minister told Army Radio in an interview on January 10 that Qunbar, “an Israeli resident with an Israeli ID card, got into the truck and saw soldiers and decided to run them over and imitate what happened in Berlin and Nice — this is a phenomenon that we need to deal with.”