Israel Launches Collective Punishment Campaign in Hebron After Soldiers Killed

Within hours of a shooting at a temporary checkpoint outside Hebron, a bulldozer was tearing down a Palestinian home near the scene, and Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, was standing in front of it with a camera. He posted the video. The demolition of a house built without permits, he said, was meant to create deterrence and exact a price. Nobody claimed the building's owners had any connection to the attackers.

The shooting itself was brief and deadly. According to the Israeli military, two men armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, driving a car with Israeli number plates, opened fire after soldiers stopped them at the checkpoint. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and three were wounded. The gunmen died after a gunfight that lasted about 20 minutes. An AFP photographer, on his way to another assignment, saw two Palestinian men with a handgun and an automatic rifle trading fire with Israeli forces.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by announcing a siege on Hebron and the neighbouring town of Halhul. He said residents of the neighbourhoods the gunmen came from would all be forced out, and he promised mass home demolitions. He also said plans had been drawn up for the largest military operation in the West Bank since 1967, the year Israel occupied the territory and about 300,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced. No date was set, he said, but the operation was on the way. His statement also pledged to expand Israeli settlements.

Defence Minister Israel Katz made the comparison explicit. Hebron, he said, would get the Jenin refugee camp model, and every clan neighbourhood the attackers came from would be emptied of residents, as in Gaza and Lebanon. Nearly 20,000 people have been forced from their homes in Jenin. Hebron is the largest Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank, with about 250,000 residents. National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also travelled to Hebron on Friday, demanding the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority and new limits on Palestinian movement, already heavily restricted by checkpoints and roadblocks.

The courts moved quickly. Israel's high court issued a temporary order halting the demolitions after human rights lawyer Mohammed Dahleh filed an urgent petition for two nearby factory owners, arguing the demolition violated international law on collective punishment and Israeli administrative law. Dahleh described it as an attempt to copy Gaza's practices in the heart of the West Bank and to wipe out whole areas as was done in Gaza and the West Bank's refugee camps. Michael Sfard, a leading Israeli lawyer, called Smotrich's video a direct admission that the demolition was collective punishment, noting that deterrence has served as a justification for it since antiquity.

The attack also set off a fight over the press. Prominent Israelis, including a candidate for the far-right Amcha Yisrael party, shared conspiracy theories, with no basis, accusing the AFP photographer of links to the gunmen. The Foreign Press Association called the claims dangerous and defamatory, saying he is a longtime professional who documented what he saw as his duties required. A week earlier, settlers severely injured photographer Heidi Levine as she documented attacks on Palestinians trying to harvest olives, and Israel has denied entry to several European journalists and an academic.

The backdrop is a West Bank that has grown more violent since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023: faster settlement expansion, ethnic cleansing and attacks on Palestinians, with more than 1,100 killed by Israeli forces or settlers. Violence has risen further since the olive harvest began in late September, as settler militants try to block a crop of economic and cultural importance.

The timing is political. Israel votes on Tuesday, and the far-right coalition, which backs settlers politically and financially, faces polls suggesting it will lose its majority. Ministers who had been campaigning rushed to the shooting site. What to watch now is whether the court order holds, whether evictions begin in Hebron and Halhul, and whether the promised large operation gets a date.