Israeli punitive measures against Palestinians in the city of Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank are escalating, with a siege imposed on the city and the town of Halhul, and threats of home demolitions and forced displacement of residents, following a shooting attack near a military checkpoint.
These measures, highlighted by the British newspaper The Guardian, reveal the occupation’s exploitation of the attack as a pretext to expand collective punishment and target Palestinian population centers, coinciding with escalating threats of a large-scale military operation in the West Bank.
The newspaper reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a siege on Hebron and the neighboring town of Halhul, threatening to displace residents of the neighborhoods where the perpetrators of the attack came from their homes, in addition to carrying out widespread demolitions of Palestinian buildings.
The demolitions began within hours of the attack, after ministers in the Israeli government, campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s elections, visited the site of the shooting.
In a striking escalation, the extremist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich posted a video showing him standing in front of a bulldozer demolishing a Palestinian home near the site of the clashes. He declared the demolition a form of collective punishment, without providing any evidence linking the homeowners to the operation.
Shortly after the demolition began, the Israeli Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction halting the operations, following an urgent petition filed by human rights lawyer Mohammed Dahleh on behalf of the owners of two adjacent factories. The petition argued that the demolitions violated international law, which prohibits collective punishment, as well as Israeli administrative law.
The Guardian quoted Dahleh as saying that what is happening in Hebron represents an attempt to replicate Israeli practices used in the Gaza Strip within the West Bank. He added that the occupation seeks to erase entire areas, similar to what it did in Gaza and the refugee camps in the West Bank.
