Netanyahu Vows West Bank Operation 'Not Seen Since the Six Day War' as Troops Bulldoze Hebron Homes
Israel is demolishing homes and forcing hundreds of Palestinians out of a Hebron neighborhood after gunmen killed two soldiers at a checkpoint, three days before an election Netanyahu is struggling to win.
The Israeli military is demolishing homes and forcibly removing hundreds of Palestinians from a neighborhood in the West Bank city of Hebron, after Palestinian gunmen attacked an Israeli checkpoint on Friday, killing two soldiers and wounding three others.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded within hours, vowing a military operation in the West Bank "on a scale not seen since the Six Day War," when Israel first occupied the territory almost 60 years ago. Speaking in a televised address from near the site of the attack outside Hebron, he said, "We will act to demolish this place, to change it completely."
By Friday afternoon, Israeli bulldozers had already begun flattening homes close to the shooting. The Israeli military told NPR that soldiers were positioned behind concrete barriers at the checkpoint when two gunmen opened fire on them. A firefight lasted about 20 minutes before soldiers killed both attackers. On Saturday, Israel imposed sweeping closures across Hebron, the most populous city in the occupied West Bank, making movement in and around it difficult. Israel already maintains some 925 checkpoints, roadblocks, earth mounds and other barriers across the territory.
Netanyahu compared his plan to last year's Israeli assault on two long-standing Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank, which displaced tens of thousands of people. Human Rights Watch said those expulsions amounted to war crimes. Israel rejects that charge. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem is now urging foreign governments to act to prevent what it called "another wave of ethnic cleansing and war crimes."
The timing is hard to miss. Israel votes on Tuesday, Oct. 27, and polls show Netanyahu and his main challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, neck and neck. Neither currently has enough support to form a government. Analysts quoted by NPR tie the scale of the response to that race. "For Netanyahu, his ticket before the election is, 'I'm Mr. Security,'" said Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. "In order to show that he is the protector of Israel, he will take harsh measures."
Citrinowicz called the decision to evict families from the neighborhood the attackers came from, without evidence of a connection to the gunmen, "collective punishment." He argued that the way to prevent further attacks is not punishment but offering Palestinians a stable economy and a reason for hope, while arresting those who actually plan violence. Other analysts, NPR reported, see the operation more as an effort by Netanyahu to stay in power than a carefully considered plan to improve Israel's long-term security.
The attack comes amid a surge of violence and land seizures by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, which the United Nations Human Rights Office for the occupied Palestinian territory has described as a "new level of dehumanization of Palestinians." NPR has also reported on settlers beating Palestinians and a U.S. photojournalist in recent attacks.
The Hebron demolitions and expulsions are the first test of how far Netanyahu intends to go before voters head to the polls in three days. Whether the operation widens beyond Hebron, and how Washington and Israel's neighbors respond, will shape both the security situation in the territory and the final stretch of a tight campaign.
