One thing I am worried about, BP, is the principle.
'Oh hey, you were suspected to be a child abuser? Lets take away your children and begin driving a wedge between you and your children for their protection!'
Also, you lose your house, there can easily be a lot of semantic stuff in there that's now unrecoverable. And it's affecting people who may not even have had the slightest involvement in it beyond being family.
The army can't just level houses any time he wish to (unless that house pose an immediate threat, such as, serving as a rocket launching base). the suspects were trialed in absentia by the highest israeli courtroom and were found guilty, i persume because of compelling evidence presented by palestinians authorities through israel intelligence. (the rumors is that there were few cameras in adjusting stores that caught the kidnappers on film, as well admissions from other people who helped with the organization. this level of action tend to be bigger than just the two kidnappers themselves)
Obviously monetary compensation can't always actually make up for the loss, but i must admit that if its the only thing that might stop future killings, i tend to agree to it. a house can be rebuilt, people die forever.
10ebbor10 - Israel shelters are more common to the point where every apartment tend to have one in it, especially in the commonly targeted areas. also, hamas have this annoying tendency to hide among civilians.
Another also, israel instantly detects launches aimed at civilian population and if it cannot intercept the rockets, it at least can give a few precious seconds heads up warning for civilians to run for shelter, while it pretty much ignores rockets that have a trajectory to an open space.
Edit - are you referring to the 2002-2007 study by the UN? while its true that the death toll is significantly higher on the palestine side, note that the percentage of israeli civilian casualties is higher and that a striking figure of 96% male casualties in the palestines cast a very deep shadow on those figures of supposedly civilians deaths and even the study note that its extremely hard to determine who was combatant and who was a civilian.
You would expect females to have the same ratio as men if they were simply civilian casualties, since the male-female ratio in gaza is 100:97.
So how come almost all of the civilian casualties are men?
fake edit: HA! the data is actually driven from betzelem. those are greatly skewed: what they do, for just one little example, is treat combatants that were killed en route by drone attack as civilian casualties. in some occasions where betzelem claimed ~60% civilian casualty rate, closer inspection revealed little than 15% were actually civilians and the rest were combatants that simply didn't die in direct combat. its like israel start calling IDF soldiers civilians only because they got killed by mortars/rockets.
Also, since the data is taken from betzelem, i am pretty sure it also includes palestines death by palestines in the total death toll data, which btw, has a direct reverse relation to palestine casualties by israelis. in other words, the number shows that when israel and palestines doesn't kill each other, palestines start killing other palestines ("War" casualties, not criminal death casualties), so that number might have significant percentage in the later years of the study.