Ehud Barak, Israel’s increasingly hawkish defence minister, approved an intelligence recommendation to demolish the houses of Hakim and Ajmad Awad, two cousins from the Palestinian village of Awarta.
The decision, the first of its kind in nearly seven years, will render the wives and children of both men homeless.
The two Palestinians are serving life sentences for the murders of Ehud and Ruth Fogel, as well as three of their six children, in the West Bank settlement of Itamar in March, 2011.
The dead included a three-month-old infant and a four-year-old boy stabbed to death in a frenzied attack that horrified Israel.
The Israeli authorities abandoned the once common practice of punitive demolitions in 2005 after facing heavy international criticism.
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