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The Israeli army is continuing its military lockdown of Hebron for the seventh consecutive day, carrying out raids and tightening restrictions in the occupied West Bank’s largest city. Two Palestinians were injured and seven detained by Israeli forces on Thursday, according to the Wafa news agency, as Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and their vehicles in the Ras al-Joura area.
Siege and Settler Attacks
Israel has imposed a tight siege of Hebron since Friday last week, closing all entrances and exits and restricting residents’ freedom of movement and their ability to access critical services. More than 3,000 people have been forced out of the city as a number of Palestinian homes have been converted into military posts and barracks.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers carried out attacks on Palestinian communities around Hebron. In an incident on Wednesday, settlers assaulted three foreign journalists, Andrey Ilyich Khrzhanovskiy, also known as Andrey X, Adele Shoko, and Jasper Nathaniel. Andrey X reportedly lost consciousness, was taken to a police station, and remained detained without receiving medical care.
The military campaign follows the killing of two Israeli soldiers by Palestinian gunmen at a checkpoint near the illegal Israeli settlement of Telem last week. The gunmen were later killed by Israeli forces in Hebron. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on social media that he had ordered security forces to immediately close Hebron and prepare for a full lockdown across all of Judea and Samaria. Proclaiming plans to change the area completely, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for a comprehensive military campaign in the West Bank matching actions in Gaza.
Destruction and Detentions
As the siege began, Israeli forces launched a large demolition operation on dozens of Palestinian buildings and stormed the Ein Deir Bahha neighbourhood, forcing dozens of families to flee their homes at night without any belongings. Footage showed Israeli soldiers beating and injuring Hijazi Shawer, a 70-year-old Palestinian shopkeeper and community leader. Israeli forces also fired tear gas canisters at Al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron, causing panic among patients and staff.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society reported that at least 110 people had been detained in the Hebron governorate since the raids began, including three women and seven children. As Israeli forces besieged Hebron, they also isolated 12 villages and hamlets in the Masafer Yatta region in the south, cutting off residents and farmers from urban centres and markets while preventing patients requiring daily medical care from reaching hospitals. Furthermore, Israeli settlers uprooted more than 200 fruit trees, destroyed water wells and agricultural facilities east of Hebron, and prevented farmers from harvesting olives, according to Wafa.
International and Local Responses
Palestinian officials have accused Netanyahu and his hard-right government of exploiting the operation to secure settler votes before Tuesday’s elections in Israel. Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq stated that the siege violates international law and amounts to an international crime and a prohibited act of aggression. The Israeli NGO B’Tselem stated that the military operation has nothing to do with security and is an act of collective punishment.
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk noted that collective punishment is a grave violation of international law, adding that threats to empty and erase entire neighbourhoods raise serious concerns of ethnic cleansing. Roland Friedrich, director of UNRWA Affairs for the occupied West Bank, stated the developments brought alarming echoes of massive displacement witnessed in the northern West Bank in early 2025.
Muhammed Shehada, at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli government’s use of collective punishment as a tool of deterrence against Palestinians has reached unprecedented levels. Shehada stated that the goal is to advance de facto annexation and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank by making life impossible, serving as a terror tactic to prevent any reaction to the displacement of the Palestinian population.
Israeli forces on Wednesday detained a Palestinian victim of a settler assault in the Khirbet Quwaweis area of Masafer Yatta, alongside a young man and a woman detained in the al-Kassara area following a Monday raid.
