Netanyahu Orders Extensive West Bank Operation After Soldiers Killed
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and three others wounded in a gun attack at a checkpoint outside Hebron, and both Palestinian assailants were shot dead. The prime minister has ordered an operation he says will involve evacuating residents and going house to house. Israel votes on Tuesday.
The gunfight lasted more than twenty minutes, and accounts of how badly the survivors were hurt differ between outlets. Hebron, a city of more than 200,000, has been cordoned off, and this is the fourth West Bank-wide closure in a month — roads remain open to Israeli drivers, settlers included. Benjamin Netanyahu’s description of what follows was unusually explicit: “We will evacuate the residents, we will go from house to house, we will also seize the weapons there, and all the terrorist infrastructure will be dealt with and destroyed.” His finance minister went further, calling for “a comprehensive military campaign to dismantle the Palestinian Authority… Exactly like in Gaza and Lebanon”. Two cautions belong with this. Mr Netanyahu’s assertion that the gunmen were Hamas members planning a larger attack is his own, offered without evidence. And the stated precedent is not reassuring: the operation he invoked, launched in January 2025, displaced tens of thousands of people from northern refugee camps according to the United Nations, which also counts at least 96 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the start of this year.