Updated October 24, 2026 at 10:34 AM EDT
The Israeli military is demolishing homes and forcibly removing hundreds of Palestinians from a neighborhood in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank following an attack by Palestinian gunmen on an Israeli checkpoint that killed two soldiers and wounded three others.
In response to that attack yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces a tough election on Tuesday, vowed to launch a military operation in the West Bank "on a scale not seen since the Six Day War," when Israel first occupied the West Bank almost 60 years ago.
"We will act to demolish this place, to change it completely," Netanyahu said in a televised speech from the location of the attack, close to the Palestinian city of Hebron.
He likened the plan to an Israeli military assault against two long-standing Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank last year in which the Israeli army displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians. Human Rights Watch said those expulsions amounted to war crimes, a charge that Israel rejects.
On Friday afternoon, the Israeli military had already begun bulldozing homes close to the site of the shooting. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem is calling on foreign governments to act to prevent "another wave of ethnic cleansing and war crimes."
Commenting on the attack, the Israeli military told NPR that soldiers were positioned behind concrete barriers at the checkpoint when two gunmen opened fire on them. A firefight continued for about 20 minutes before Israeli soldiers killed the attackers.
This comes amid a surge of violence and land seizures by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The United Nations Human Rights Office for the occupied Palestinian territory has described it as a "new level of dehumanization of Palestinians."
Israel imposed widespread closures in Hebron on Saturday, making movement difficult in and around the most populous city of the occupied West Bank. Israel regularly imposes restrictions on movement across the Palestinian occupied territory with some 925 checkpoints, roadblocks, earth mounds and other barriers.
Analysts tie the wide-scale Israeli response to Friday's attack to the Israeli national elections on October 27, claiming this is an effort by Netanyahu to appear strong to voters. According to polls, Netanyahu and his main opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, are neck and neck in the race. Neither candidate currently has enough support to form a government.
"For Netanyahu, his ticket before the election is, 'I'm Mr. Security,'" Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told NPR. "In order to show that he is the protector of Israel, he will take harsh measures in order to show the Israeli public that he supports them and he's defending them."
This is a view shared by other analysts, who see this latest military action more as an effort by Netanyahu to remain in power than a closely thought-out strategy to improve Israel's long-term security. Citrinowicz called Netanyahu's response — to evict families from their homes in the neighborhood the attackers came from, without evidence of a connection to the gunmen — "collective punishment."
"The way to prevent [more attacks by Palestinians] is not collective punishment. It's by giving hope," Citrinowicz said. "Distinguish between those who want to commit terrorist attacks and arrest them and those who just want to live peacefully and help them to live peacefully, with an economy that works, with everything they need for stability.
Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv and James Hider in Washington, D.C., contributed reporting. This story was edited by Samantha Balaban.
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