Israel has launched a campaign of collective punishment against Palestinians in Hebron after gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers and injured three near a checkpoint outside the city.
Benjamin Netanyahu announced a siege on Hebron and neighbouring Halhul and said residents of the gunmen’s home neighbourhoods would all be forced out. He promised mass demolitions of homes.
The first destruction began within hours of the attack, as ministers who had been on the campaign trail ahead of elections on Tuesday rushed to the site of the shooting.
The far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, posted a video of himself in front of a bulldozer as it tore down a Palestinian home near the site of the firefight.
The destruction of a home built without permits aimed to “create deterrence and exact a price”, Smotrich said. There was no claim of a connection between the building’s owners and the attackers.
Soon after the destruction began, Israel’s high court issued a temporary order to stop the demolitions. A human rights lawyer, Mohammed Dahleh, filed an urgent petition on behalf of two factory owners nearby, arguing that the demolition violated international law on collective punishment and Israeli administrative law.
“What we saw today was an attempt to copy the illegal practices used in Gaza, in the heart of the West Bank,” Dahleh said. “They want to wipe out entire areas exactly as they did in Gaza and the refugee camps in the West Bank.”
Michael Sfard, a leading Israeli lawyer, said Smotrich’s video was a “direct admission” that the demolitions were a collective punishment. He noted that deterrence had been used as an excuse for collective punishment since antiquity.
The defence minister, Israel Katz, promised further mass demolitions and forced displacement. He drew an explicit comparison with Gaza and said Hebron would be targeted in the same way as Jenin refugee camp, where nearly 20,000 people have been forced from their homes. Hebron is the largest Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank, with about 250,000 residents.
Katz said: “The Jenin refugee camp model arrives in Hebron. Every clan neighbourhood in Hebron from which the terrorists emerged today will be evacuated of its residents. Just like in Gaza, just like in Lebanon.”
Netanyahu announced that plans had been drawn up for the largest military operation in the West Bank since 1967, when Israeli forces occupied the Palestinian territory and forcibly displaced about 300,000 Palestinians.
No date had been set “but it is on the way”, he said in a statement that also pledged mass forced displacement and demolitions in Hebron and the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The attack was launched by two men armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, according to the Israeli military. The men, who were driving a car with Israeli number plates, opened fire after they were stopped by soldiers at a temporary checkpoint outside Hebron. They were killed after a 20-minute gunfight.
An AFP photographer who was on the way to another assignment and witnessed the gun battle saw two Palestinian men armed with a handgun and an automatic rifle exchanging fire with Israeli forces.
Prominent Israelis, including a candidate for the far-right Amcha Yisrael party, shared conspiracy theories groundlessly accusing the AFP photographer of links to the gunmen after he documented the Hebron attack.
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) said it was deeply alarmed by claims the photographer had been tipped off, describing them as “dangerous and defamatory”. “He is a longtime professional who was on his way to another assignment and courageously documented what he saw in keeping with his professional duties,” the FPA said in a statement.
The incident came a week after settlers severely injured the photographer Heidi Levine as she documented attacks on Palestinians attempting to harvest olives in the occupied West Bank. Israel has also denied entry to several European journalists and an academic.
Since the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks there has been a surge of Israeli settlement expansion, ethnic cleansing and violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed there by Israeli forces or settlers.
Attacks have intensified further since the start of the annual olive harvest in late September. Israeli settler militants have used violence to stop Palestinians bringing in a crop that is economically and culturally vital to their communities.
Israel holds elections on Tuesday. The current far-right coalition, which backs settlers politically and financially, is seeking to shore up voter support in the face of polls that show it is likely to loose its majority.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, also travelled to Hebron on Friday and demanded the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority and restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement, which is already heavily curtailed by Israeli controls, checkpoints and roadblocks.
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