Israeli troops have levelled a neighbourhood in Hebron, driving out hundreds of families in collective punishment for a militant attack on an army checkpoint outside the West Bank city, local Palestinian authorities said.
The Hebron municipality estimated that 35 hectares (86 acres) had been destroyed or marked for destruction and about 1,500 people had been evicted from their homes by Saturday afternoon in the district of Ein Deir Baha. The whole city of 250,000 people was sealed off by checkpoints on every point of entry.
Videos sent by a Hebron resident showed a substantial area of devastation with every house over several blocks flattened in an urban area. One video showed soldiers marking Palestinian houses with a sprayed black cross, another showed a bulldozer tearing down a stone wall on a hillside and another showed a large residential building festooned with Israeli flags.
People said the building was the home of a prominent Hebron family that had been commandeered as a temporary military headquarters.
The large-scale demolitions follow an attack on Friday on an Israeli military checkpoint outside Hebron by two gunmen. After a 20-minute gunfight, two Israeli soldiers were killed, three injured and the two gunmen were also killed.
Israeli elections will take place in four days and the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the extreme-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, travelled to the site of the attack to promise an immediate and ferocious response.
Netanyahu said Israel would “act to destroy this place”. Smotrich who is standing for election in a smaller coalition party, had himself filmed wearing body armour in front of a Palestinian building being demolished. He said he had ordered “the immediate demolition of a wide row of illegal Arab structures adjacent to the attack site”.
Smotrich also called for “a comprehensive military campaign … exactly like in Gaza and Lebanon”. Ein Deir Baha, the focus of the demolitions, was alleged to be the home district of the two gunmen.
A spokesperson for the Hebron municipality said that about 300 families had been evicted. Some had taken refuge in the homes of friends and relatives, while the municipality said it had opened community halls and children’s play areas to shelter others.
A Palestinian news agency, Wafa, reported Israeli plans to displace a further 2,500 people. “We are being collectively punished for something we neither did nor supported,” a Hebron civil rights activist, Issa Amro, said. “Our suffering is being turned into political material for Israel’s elections, while innocent families pay the price.”
Amro said his sister’s family was one of the hundreds driven out of their homes.
“We are talking about hundreds of families who left their homes because of this, and they are not at all connected to what happened yesterday [Friday],” Amro said in a telephone interview. “It’s a very big area and we don’t know what’s going on, whether it is only election propaganda or if it’s a serious plan from decisions on what to do after the election.”
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said in a written statement that approximately 2,000 residents of the target area belonged to a clan which the IDF said was “associated with Hamas and from which the terrorists who carried out yesterday’s attack originated”.
“As part of the operation, civilians who wished to evacuate were permitted to temporarily leave the area through designated screening points staffed by the ISA and IDF soldiers,” the statement said.
Separately, the IDF said, it was carrying out demolitions near the site of Friday’s attack, saying it was tearing down “infrastructure and structures built in violation of the law, in order to enforce law and order and remove potential security risks posed by these structures”.
