Israel begins multi-day West Bank operation, demolishing homes in Hebron

Israel’s military has launched an operation in the occupied West Bank that it says will last several days and include searches and demolitions of buildings, after gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near Hebron on Friday, AFP and Reuters reported, as cited by Dawn and The Express Tribune.

Israeli forces were demolishing a Palestinian house in Hebron on Friday, according to a Reuters photograph published by Dawn. The announcement came days before Israeli elections on Tuesday, in which security has been a main issue.

What the Israeli military said

In a joint statement with the Shin Bet domestic security agency, the military said forces were searching targets and questioning Palestinians to “locate and dismantle terrorist infrastructure” in the Hebron area, from where it said the attackers had come. It said forces were also “demolishing illegal structures that could pose a security threat at the site of the encounter”, and that “counterterrorism operations” were under way at dozens of locations. The operation “is expected to continue for several days”, the statement said. These are the Israeli military’s own descriptions.

An AFP photographer in Hebron saw the gun battle begin at the Farsh al-Hawa checkpoint, between the soldiers and two Palestinian men armed with a handgun and an automatic rifle. Israeli forces eventually shot dead the two men. Our earlier report covered the first hours of the Hebron shooting and Netanyahu’s closure order.

Netanyahu’s plan

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in a tight race to keep his job, visited the scene with his right-wing allies and promised a harder line. He credited the soldiers with having “prevented what could have been a major attack” and ordered a lockdown of the West Bank.

In Hebron he said that he and Defence Minister Israel Katz were “considering a very extensive IDF operation in Judea and Samaria, such as has not been carried out since” the 1967 war. The first step, he said, would be for Israeli forces to “enter the neighbourhood from which the terrorists came, evacuate the residents, go from house to house, and destroy the terrorist infrastructure”. The military would use a model previously applied in refugee camps in the northern West Bank, he said, where a large operation launched in January 2025 forcibly displaced thousands of people, according to the United Nations. Netanyahu also vowed to “pursue Hamas” everywhere, saying: “You have no place to hide.”

Hamas, without claiming responsibility, praised the attack on the soldiers as a “heroic operation” and called on supporters to carry out more.

Warnings of collective punishment

The Israeli rights group B’Tselem called for urgent international pressure to prevent Israel from pursuing “plans for collective punishment and acts that could constitute war crimes”. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking through a spokesman, voiced concern over Israeli closures that affect Palestinian livelihoods and called for a halt to violence on all sides.

Within the Israeli government, the calls were for more force:

• Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister who also holds a post in the defence ministry, called for a large-scale military offensive in the West Bank “exactly like in Gaza”.
• Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right national security minister, said the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah “must be dismantled”. No evidence suggests the Authority was connected to the attack, AFP noted.
• Gadi Eisenkot, the former army chief and Netanyahu’s main rival, said he was praying for the wounded soldiers.

Both Smotrich and Ben Gvir are strong supporters of settlements in the West Bank, which have spread under Netanyahu’s government and are illegal under international law.

The toll

The operation comes as tensions rise across the territory, including over attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian olive harvesters. According to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry data, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,117 Palestinians in the West Bank since the Gaza war began in October 2023. Israeli figures show at least 51 Israelis, civilians and security personnel, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations in the same period. Read our report on settlers attacking olive pickers in Turmus Ayya.

Why it matters

Residents of the neighbourhood from which Netanyahu says the attackers came may face evacuation and home demolitions, measures that human rights groups describe as collective punishment. The operation is being announced in the final days of an election campaign, which means decisions on its scale will be tied to domestic politics. Its size, and whether it follows the displacement seen in northern West Bank camps, will determine the damage to Palestinian families in Hebron in the coming days.

This article draws on reporting by Dawn, The Express Tribune, AFP and Reuters.