Israel’s military launched a multi-day operation in the occupied West Bank on Friday, October 23, 2026, with searches, arrests and demolitions focused on Hebron. The operation followed an attack at an Israeli military checkpoint near the city that killed two Israeli soldiers.
According to Al Jazeera, the two suspected Palestinian gunmen were shot dead. The military said the operation would last several days and include searches and the demolition of buildings, according to The Hindu.
A joint statement from the Israeli military and the Shin Bet agency said security forces were questioning suspects and searching targets in the Hebron area, according to South China Morning Post. The statement described ‘counterterrorism operations’ under way at dozens of locations.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces would go house-to-house in the Hebron neighbourhood the attackers came from, according to Al Jazeera. He said the operation would involve demolitions and forced displacement. Netanyahu also said it may be a very extensive operation.
By Saturday morning, Israeli forces had raided at least 15 towns in the northern West Bank and arrested dozens of Palestinians, Al Jazeera correspondents reported. The same report said Israeli bulldozers wrecked a three-storey building in Hebron.
Al Jazeera also reported that Israeli forces ordered hundreds of Palestinian families to leave their homes in the Ein Deir Bahha area. The report does not give an exact number of families.
The Israeli rights group B’Tselem warned that the planned offensive amounts to ‘collective punishment and acts that could constitute war crimes,’ according to The Hindu. The sources do not include a response from the Israeli military or government to this criticism.
Hamas did not claim responsibility for the checkpoint attack. It praised the attack as a ‘heroic operation’ and called for more attacks, according to The Hindu. The same report said no evidence links the Palestinian Authority to the attack.
The operation comes days before Israel’s election on Tuesday, October 27, 2026. Netanyahu is in a tight race to keep his job, and security is a key focus of the campaign, according to South China Morning Post and The Hindu.
An AFP tally cited by The Hindu says Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,117 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 2023. The same tally says at least 51 Israelis have been killed in that period.
The key facts in this report rely largely on Al Jazeera, which published a full article with on-the-ground reporting and videos posted on Telegram. The South China Morning Post and The Hindu reports are based on AFP and are near-identical to each other. No independent confirmation of the Hebron scenes is available beyond Al Jazeera’s reporting.
Several details remain unconfirmed. Beyond the ‘dozens’ of arrests in the Al Jazeera report, no independent figure for detentions is available. No casualty or displacement totals for the operation have been confirmed, and the figure for displaced families is given only as ‘hundreds.’
The military said the operation is expected to last several days. Netanyahu said it may be a very extensive operation, and Israel’s election takes place on Tuesday.
Sources
This article was written with AI assistance from the published reporting listed above. It is part of the World Brief daily news podcast.