Israeli forces have sealed Hebron and imposed sweeping movement restrictions across the occupied West Bank after a Friday shooting at a military checkpoint near the city killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded three others. The two Palestinian attackers were also killed. Israel’s military said the men were carrying weapons and may have intended a larger attack before engaging troops at the checkpoint.
The operation quickly expanded into raids, arrests, demolitions and forced evacuations. Residents were ordered out of parts of the city, including Deir Bahha and al-Jalda, while troops occupied Palestinian homes in southern Hebron and converted some into barracks, observation posts and interrogation sites.
The military said it operated in more than 400 locations over the weekend and arrested 40 Palestinians it described as affiliated with Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Israel’s prime minister ordered Hebron cordoned off and directed preparations for a wider West Bank lockdown, while saying forces would use house-to-house operations and tactics previously employed in northern West Bank refugee camps. The military said the Hebron operation would last several days, but did not specify when the closures would end. The restrictions have blocked residents from entering or leaving the city, disrupted medical travel and forced some families to leave on foot.
The scale of the response matters because Hebron is one of the West Bank’s main industrial and commercial centres. It produces about 40 percent of Palestinian industrial output and 30 percent of exports, so prolonged closures can interrupt supplies, raise production costs and force factories and businesses to reduce hours or stop operating. The city’s divided political and security structure adds to the impact: under the 1997 Hebron Protocol, the H1 area was assigned Palestinian civil control, while H2, about 20 percent of the city, remained under full Israeli security control despite housing roughly 7,000 Palestinians.
Hebron’s restrictions also build on an existing system of barriers and settlement-related controls. Israeli authorities recently installed three gates across a 200-metre stretch of the Old City, further restricting access to commercial routes including Shuhada Street, where more than 500 Palestinian shops have been shuttered over the years. The Old City contains the Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site divided and placed under tighter access controls after a 1994 massacre in which 29 Palestinian worshippers were killed. Israel’s finance minister has also announced that planning and construction powers over the mosque and surrounding H2 area would be taken from the Palestinian municipality, deepening the dispute over who governs the city centre.