Israeli forces obstruct Palestinian shopkeeper Hijazi Shawer and other residents from returning to their homes during a large-scale military operation in the West Bank city of Hebron, 27 October. Two days earlier, Shawer was hospitalized after being assaulted by Israeli forces while attempting to return to his home.
ActiveStillsIsrael’s military is committing international crimes with the intent of genocide in its assault on Hebron, where thousands of people have been displaced from or trapped inside their homes, according to a prominent Palestinian human rights group.
The offensive was launched after a shooting attack that left two soldiers and two Palestinian gunmen dead at a checkpoint outside the city in the occupied West Bank last Friday.
Hebron was put under lockdown after senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declared their intent to forcibly displace Palestinians and destroy their homes, replicating the destruction of three refugee camps in the northern West Bank beginning in January 2025.
The statements have raised concerns of collective punishment, mass forced displacement and ethnic cleansing as senior Israeli officials appeared to use Friday’s shooting attack as a pretext to alter the demographics of the second-largest city in the occupied West Bank after East Jerusalem.
The Global Protection Cluster – a network engaged in protection work in humanitarian crises led by the UN refugee agency – warned that mass forced displacement and collective punishment were underway in Hebron.
Statements by senior Israeli officials “raise serious concerns regarding the risk of unlawful forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing.”
The protection cluster added that Israeli forces have also “imposed extensive movement restrictions” and “carried out widespread home searches and detained dozens of Palestinians.”
Collective punishment
On Wednesday, several days into the Hebron raid, the Israeli military claimed that its forces had “confiscated weapons, including an M16 rifle, knives, a vest [and] a replica gun” during its “counterterrorism operation.”
Photographs published by the military purportedly showing the confiscated “weapons” appeared to show a slingshot, empty holsters, knee pads and a jumble of flags and clothing, as well as plastic-wrapped parts of a rifle – drawing skepticism and ridicule over the little return on the massive display of force.
The Israeli military’s chief of staff intended to end the Hebron operation the day it began, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Monday, but Netanyahu and Israel Katz, the defense minister, “pushed to continue displacing residents and to prevent their return to their homes.”Reut Shaer, an attorney with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, told Haaretz that “no security incident grants the army permission to punish an entire city.”
“The mass displacement and destruction carried out by Israel in Hebron are part of its elimination project in the West Bank: systematically dismantling Palestinian collective life,” B’Tselem, another Israeli human rights group, stated.
Thousands forced from their homes
More than 3,000 people had been forced to leave their homes, Khaled Dudin, the governor of Hebron, said on Thursday. The ongoing offensive was hindering people from “accessing healthcare and other essential services,” Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, reported.
The education of more than a quarter of a million students enrolled in nearly 600 schools was being disrupted, according to Dudin.
Israeli forces shut down the Bab al-Zawiya commercial center in Hebron on Thursday, forcing shop owners to shutter their businesses, according to Wafa.
Israeli flags hang from a residential building in the West Bank city of Hebron as Israeli forces convert Palestinian homes into military barracks in the Deir Baha area, 24 October.
ActiveStillsIsraeli troops had taken over homes after forcibly displacing their residents, while other homes have been ransacked and looted, rights groups say.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that Israeli troops had stolen money, gold jewelry and other personal property while raiding Hebron homes.
“Israeli soldiers also forced homeowners to leave without letting them take any of their belongings and provided no receipt or itemized list of what had been seized,” the Geneva-based group added. “This constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law and may amount to a war crime.”
One home was turned into “a military barracks” with Israeli flags raised on it, according to Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group.
Some people were under siege in sealed-off areas where Israeli forces were preventing the entry of aid.
Local committees were providing emergency assistance to hundreds of families “displaced or otherwise affected by the assault,” Wafa reported.
Genocidal intent
Displaced families were being prevented from returning to their homes, according to Al-Haq. The group said it had documented the assault of a 66-year-old man by Israeli forces as he attempted to return to his home to fetch medication on 25 October.
The Israeli military sealed off the main entrances to Hebron, preventing Palestinians from entering or leaving, affecting preschools, schools and universities, Al-Haq added. The Ibrahimi Mosque was closed on 26 October and Israeli forces were “preventing the call to prayer and the holding of prayers” at the holy site.
The forced transfer of Palestinians in Hebron amounts to “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and which, when carried out with an intent to destroy the Palestinian group, amounts to genocide,” according to Al-Haq.
The group pointed to Israel’s systematic dismantling and obstruction of the work of institutions that protect Palestine refugees, particularly UNRWA, as a means by which Israel creates conditions of life intended to destroy the Palestinian people by “making their continued existence as a group and the realization of their self-determination unviable.”
Volker Türk, the UN human rights chief, said that “Israel’s aggressive operation” raises “grave concerns of unnecessary and disproportionate use of force – which must end.”
“Those who have been displaced must be allowed to return home,” Türk said. “Israel must ensure compensation and reparation for unlawful evictions and demolitions, and associated displacement.”
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