Hebron: an update from the heart of the City amidst Israel’s elections

JVL Introduction

Two Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinian gunmen we are told and others were injured. Of course, there have been many Palestinians killed in the West Bank, overwhelmingly unarmed including many children; many more have been injured, many seriously and this is well known but any Palestinian reaction is “terrorism” so I wonder what the word is for what Israel has done to Palestinians in Hebron. Of course the Palestinians who shot the soldiers were killed on the spot but that is not enough for Israel, especially not so close to the elections – in which none of the Palestinians in Hebron have a vote, of course.

Here Issa Amro, a Palestinian human rights activist who lives in Hebron writes about Israel’s “response” to the shootings and notes that the Hebron Municipality estimates that “3,971 people from 619 families have been forcibly displaced since Oct. 23. …Families were ordered out of their homes in the middle of the night, given just minutes to gather their belongings, and left with nowhere to go. Some fled with only the clothes on their backs, leaving behind even their children’s schoolbooks.

The scale of the destruction is staggering. According to the municipality, approximately 86 acres of the city had already been destroyed or marked for demolition by Saturday afternoon. Israeli soldiers have taken over evacuated houses, spray-painted black Xs on their walls, and draped Israeli flags over balconies. Military vehicles have blocked neighborhood roads, while checkpoints have been closed, cutting residents off from their homes and restricting movement across the city.”

Collective punishment is too limited a term for what is happening, which is the forced displacement (ethnic cleansing) of yet another part of the West Bank.

(There are more images in the original that you may want to check out.)

This article was originally published by +972 Magazine on Tue 27 Oct 2026. Read the original here.