IDF troops, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Border Police officers, and the Judea Regional Brigade forcibly evacuated 2,000 Hebron-area Palestinians and destroyed an unspecified number of structures in the area over the weekend in response to Friday morning’s deadly Hamas terrorist attack.

Although in early 2025, Israel cleared areas of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur al-Shams in the West Bank, evacuating close to 40,000 Palestinians, those areas had experienced well-documented mass terror incidents dating back to early 2022.

In fact, in those areas the IDF had carried out multiple temporary evacuations and even sent in the Palestinian Authority to fight large and organized terror groups before it took the measure of a mass evacuation and destroyed a number of those areas’ structures.

In contrast, the IDF provided little information about the offenses of the 2,000 evacuated Palestinians, other than to say that they were familially linked to the Hamas-linked Gaza clan.

While during the Knife Intifada and earlier years, Hebron was one of the most violent and unstable areas, and there have been some past terror incidents from Hebron over the last three years of war, generally it has not been one of the leading problem spots.

IDF demolishes structures during Hebron operations

In addition, the IDF said it destroyed structures which were illegally built and could make security operations harder to carry out, but it kept extremely vague about what those operations were and why whole buildings would need to be destroyed to carry them out.

Pressed about how many of the 2,000 Hamula members actually have records linking them to terror, or at least low-grade rock throwing, multiple IDF sources did not appear to have any specific information on the topic.

Rather, the operation seemed to be motivated by public statements made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz about clearing or destroying the neighborhood of the two men involved in the terror incident on Friday – seemingly a collective punishment measure.

First operation of its kind in West Bank

While Israel has placed closures on areas where terror emanated from in the past, it has not carried out such mass evacuations and building demolitions without a more specific basis to connect those being impacted,

It was unclear what the legal basis for the actions was, and global criticism was starting to stream in, but in Israel’s current atmosphere leading into Tuesday’s elections, it seemed unlikely that any immediate criticism would have an impact.  

In its vague Friday night statement, the IDF said that it launched a counterterrorism operation in the Hebron area following Friday morning’s deadly Hamas terrorist attack.

Security forces are conducting systematic searches for terrorist infrastructure and weapons in the area and questioning dozens of suspects, according to the joint statement.