Netanyahu Orders Major West Bank Strike After Hebron Checkpoint Attack

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a large-scale military operation in the West Bank following an attack on an Israeli checkpoint near Hebron that killed two soldiers and wounded three others. Speaking via television from the site of the incident, Netanyahu promised an offensive "on a scale not seen since the Six Day War," when Israel first occupied the territory nearly 60 years ago.

Israeli forces had already begun flattening homes near the shooting location on Friday afternoon. The prime minister stated his intent to "demolish this place, to change it completely." The military confirmed that soldiers were positioned behind concrete barriers when two gunmen opened fire. A 20-minute firefight ensued before troops killed the attackers.

Netanyahu compared the planned response to last year’s Israeli assault on two refugee camps in the northern West Bank, which displaced tens of thousands of residents. Human Rights Watch characterized those expulsions as war crimes, a charge Israel rejects. The current operation targets a neighborhood in Hebron, the most populous city in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has imposed widespread closures that restrict local movement.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem urged foreign governments to intervene to prevent "another wave of ethnic cleansing and war crimes." The United Nations Human Rights Office for the occupied Palestinian territory has described the current climate as a "new level of dehumanization of Palestinians." Israel maintains roughly 925 checkpoints, roadblocks, and barriers across the territory.

Analysts link the scale of the response to Israel’s national elections scheduled for October 27. Polls indicate a tight race between Netanyahu and his main rival, Gadi Eisenkot, with neither leader holding enough support to form a government independently. Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, argued that Netanyahu aims to present himself as "Mr. Security" to voters.

Citrinowicz described the eviction of families from the attackers’ neighborhood, absent evidence linking them to the gunmen, as "collective punishment." He advised that authorities prevent attacks by arresting specific suspects while supporting those seeking a stable economy. "The way to prevent [more attacks by Palestinians] is not collective punishment. It's by giving hope," he said.