'Act of Collective Punishment': Netanyahu Condemned Over 'Full Lockdown' of Occupied West Bank

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that he has ordered the Israel Defense Force to "immediately impose a lockdown on Hebron and prepare for a full lockdown of the entire" illegally occupied West Bank following a gun battle that reportedly left two Palestinians dead and at least five Israeli soldiers wounded.Following an emergency meeting with Israel's security cabinet and his top military advisors, Netanyahu posted a statement to social media in which he blamed Hamas for the incident and accused the group of “planning a major attack aimed at murdering innocent civilians.”

Netanyahu claimed that “large quantities of weapons and ammunition" had been discovered, but did not offer details about the nature of attack or its alleged planning. Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who was on the scene of the shooting incident soon after it occurred, warned that “comprehensive military operation” in the occupied West Bank would soon be underway to handle those termed "terrorists."Smotrich also said that the Palestinian Authority, which governs the illegally occupied territories, should be "dismantled," called for large-scale military operations like those executed in Gaza and Lebanon, and for the increased demolition of Palestinian homes."There is no alternative to a comprehensive military operation in Judea and Samaria that will lead to the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority, the confiscation of weapons and the elimination of terrorists," Smotrich said.

"Just as in Gaza and Lebanon." The order to demolish homes near where Friday's incident took place, he added, "will begin to be implemented within the next hour, and the demolitions will continue throughout the afternoon."Mustafa Barghouti, founder and leader of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), was among those warning that what comes next will not be good for the Palestinian people, calling the complete closure of the West Bank "an act of collective punishment."

Netanyahu, Barghouti said, "declared today that he is planning to carry out the ethnic cleansing of entire neighborhoods in Hebron."Such a declaration, he continued, "represents an alarming escalation in Israel’s policies of forced displacement and a flagrant violation of international law and the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people. It must be unequivocally condemned, and the international community must act immediately to prevent the forcible displacement of Palestinian residents and hold those responsible accountable."Yariv Oppenheimer, former director of Peace Now and a project director at the Geneva Institute, told Al-Jazeera in a Friday interview that Israeli leaders would now leverage the incident to further tighten their grip on the occupied West Bank, already rife with violence from Israeli settlers and IDF operations in Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).“The Israeli army is getting into the Palestinian cities, the settlers are attacking Palestinians, and the situation is impossible" in the OPT, Oppenheimer explained.Oppenheimer added that he expected Netanyahu and his cabinet to take advantage of this attack on Israeli soldiers in order to push “more propaganda” to justify the likely violence that is coming from the Israeli government and violent settler factions."There will be house demolitions.

We will see [a] curfew. We will see more soldiers [...] making arrests, and definitely we might see the settlers trying to target Palestinians in revenge for this attack, and trying to take advantage of this situation in order to escalate the situation even more,” Oppenheimer warned.