Israeli forces forced about 1,500 Palestinians to leave their homes in Hebron on Saturday. The displacement followed a large-scale military operation launched after two Palestinian gunmen shot two soldiers dead at a military checkpoint on Friday.
Yousef Al-Jaabari, the mayor of Hebron, said about 200 families were displaced on Saturday. Israel imposed sweeping closures and ordered residents to leave the densely populated Al-Jaladah and Ein Deir Baha neighborhoods near the checkpoint. The two areas comprise 495 residential units housing about 2,500 residents. The mayor warned that 1,000 more residents faced displacement as the military operation continued.
"Women, children and elderly people were left on the streets of Hebron with nowhere to go after being forced from their homes," Al-Jaabari said. He added that those remaining were trapped inside the neighborhoods as troops marked evacuated homes and distributed notices ordering residents to leave without their vehicles.
Israeli forces closed all entrances to Hebron and demolished shops, factories, homes and roads at the western entrance to the city. Several homes inside the city were seized and turned into military barracks and field interrogation centers.
The military operation began after two Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a military checkpoint near Hebron on Friday, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding three others. The Israeli military stated that both gunmen were shot dead.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the large-scale operation and preparations for wider closures across the occupied West Bank. Within hours of the attack, forces demolished a residential building with three apartments and destroyed commercial shops in Farsh Al-Hawa.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society reported that about 70 Palestinians were detained in large-scale raids across the occupied West Bank following the attack. The municipality opened temporary shelters for displaced families, but closures made it difficult for workers to reach trapped residents or deliver essential supplies.
Al-Jaabari criticized the actions as collective punishment. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called for urgent international pressure on Israel to protect Palestinians, warning that the forced evacuations threatened to repeat the mass displacement of the 1948 Nakba through new military tactics.
The ministry accused Israel of pursuing political gains at the expense of Palestinian rights. Al-Jaabari similarly accused Netanyahu of exploiting the operation to win votes among Israeli settlers ahead of parliamentary elections on Tuesday. Israeli settlers erected a tent west of Hebron in Khirbet Hamasa on Friday night to establish a new outpost on Palestinian land, despite an Israeli court order prohibiting them from entering the area.
