Israeli army forces 1,500 Palestinians from homes in West Bank’s Hebron, plans to displace 2,500 more: Municipality

The Israeli army has forced around 1,500 Palestinians from 250 families to flee their homes in Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank since Friday and plans to displace another 2,500 in the coming hours, the municipality said Saturday. In a statement, the Hebron municipality said the displaced families lived in the Deir Bahha and al-Jilda neighborhoods, which together are home to 500 families. Israeli forces marked evacuated homes and distributed notices ordering the remaining families to leave without taking their vehicles, it added.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry warned Saturday against inflammatory Israeli statements threatening to expand forced displacement and evacuate and destroy neighborhoods in Hebron. In a statement, the ministry described the threats as attempts to repeat the “Nakba” and carry out ethnic cleansing. It instructed Palestinian embassies and diplomatic missions to take urgent international action to press governments to adopt firm positions against Israeli practices.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday during an incursion into Hebron that his army was preparing a large-scale military offensive in the occupied West Bank involving the displacement of Palestinians from their neighborhoods and raids on their homes. “We will do here what we have not done before. We will apply the successful offensive model we implemented in the refugee camps,” he said, referring to military offensives in the northern West Bank.

Siege and evacuation The Israeli army continued its siege of Hebron for a second consecutive day Saturday as part of a military offensive launched Friday, forcing Palestinians to evacuate their homes. The army imposed a closure on the city Friday after two Palestinians fired at an Israeli checkpoint. Both attackers and two Israeli soldiers were killed, while three other soldiers were wounded, according to Israeli figures. The closure was accompanied by a larger deployment of Israeli military vehicles and bulldozers, the blocking of main entrances and roads connecting Hebron to surrounding areas, and raids and searches of homes.

The occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has seen escalating Israeli military attacks and occupier violence since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023. These attacks have included killing and detaining Palestinians, demolishing homes and other structures, burning mosques and vehicles, bulldozing farmland, preventing farmers from accessing their fields and displacing Palestinian communities, alongside illegal settlement expansion.

Palestinians warn that these measures pave the way for Israel’s formal annexation of the West Bank, undermining prospects for establishing a Palestinian state in accordance with relevant UN resolutions.