Hebron Clearances Open Path to Netanyahu's Election Push

Israeli bulldozers began flattening homes near a Hebron checkpoint on Friday afternoon, clearing a neighborhood days before national elections after a gunfight that killed two soldiers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the site of the attack to announce a West Bank military campaign "on a scale not seen since the Six Day War." "We will act to demolish this place, to change it completely," he said in a televised address.

The Israeli military told NPR that soldiers stood behind concrete barriers when two gunmen opened fire at the checkpoint. The exchange of fire lasted about 20 minutes before troops killed the attackers, military officials said. Three additional soldiers were wounded in the incident.

Netanyahu compared the planned operation 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 stated that those expulsions amounted to war crimes, a charge Israel rejects. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has urged foreign governments to intervene to prevent "another wave of ethnic cleansing and war crimes."

The West Bank contains roughly 925 checkpoints, roadblocks, earth mounds, and other barriers, and Israel has imposed widespread closures in Hebron, the territory's most populous city, restricting movement. The United Nations Human Rights Office for the occupied Palestinian territory has described conditions as a "new level of dehumanization of Palestinians." Settler violence and land seizures against Palestinians have also increased across the territory.

Elections are set for October 27, four days from now. Polls show Netanyahu running neck and neck with his main rival, Gadi Eisenkot, and neither candidate currently commands enough support to form a government. Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, linked the scale of the military response to the campaign. "For Netanyahu, his ticket before the election is, 'I'm Mr. Security,'" Citrinowicz said. "In order to show that he is the protector of Israel, he will take harsh measures in order to show the Israeli public that he supports them and he's defending them."

Citrinowicz called the removal of families from the attackers' neighborhood, without evidence of any link to the gunmen, "collective punishment." "The way to prevent [more attacks by Palestinians] is not collective punishment. It's by giving hope," he said, urging authorities to arrest those who intend to carry out attacks while supporting those who want to live peacefully.