The Israeli military's week-long offensive in the Hebron governorate has crossed from targeted security operation into systematic collective punishment. Triggered by a gun attack that killed two Israeli soldiers — both Palestinian suspects were also killed — the response has displaced 3,361 people from 537 families, including 232 infants, 326 elderly, 147 pregnant or breastfeeding women, and 213 people with chronic illness. Municipal figures put the total affected, including those under siege, at roughly 5,000 people from 780 families. The economic and institutional damage is staggering. Some 262,000 students across 589 schools have been forced into remote learning. Daily economic losses run between 10 million and 12 million shekels ($3.2m–$3.9m). The Palestinian Prisoner's Society reports 110 Palestinians detained in the governorate between Friday and Wednesday, with soldiers beating detainees in Dura and Wad al-Saman, and arresting two brothers while they ploughed their land east of Yatta. Beyond Hebron, the pattern repeats. In Qalandiya refugee camp near occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli forces raided on Thursday, wounding a 15-year-old boy shot with live ammunition in both legs and a 12-year-old hit by bullet fragments. In al-Maniya, southeast of Bethlehem, soldiers and settlers beat disabled Palestinian Mohammad Ahmad Ayesh Thawabta. In the Nablus governorate, 13 Palestinians were detained in pre-dawn raids, homes searched, families harassed. Settler violence operates in parallel with and under the cover of military operations. In Masafer Yatta, armed settlers attacked US journalist Jasper Nathaniel and two activists in Umm al-Khair, beating them, stealing equipment, and pepper-spraying Nathaniel before his arrest. Settlers attacked vehicles at Hebron's closed northern entrance. Russian activist Adele Shoko documented the assault on X. A novel and telling escalation: Israeli forces are now systematically demolishing Palestinian memorials. In Dura, soldiers fired heavy tear gas before bulldozing a mural bearing images of Palestinians killed over decades, including Bajis Abu Atwan, killed in the 1970s. Al Jazeera's Muntasir Nassar identified this as a new pattern adopted across all West Bank governorates, concentrated most heavily in Hebron — the erasure of collective memory as a deliberate instrument of control. UNOCHA confirmed ongoing operations, blocked access, and tight movement restrictions across the governorate, noting disruptions to livelihoods, education, and healthcare. Most displaced families are sheltering with relatives. The UN called for prevention of further forced displacements and demolitions — a call that, by the seventh day of the offensive, reads as diplomatic formality. The intensification tracks a clear timeline: Israeli military and settler attacks across the West Bank have escalated sharply since the war on Gaza began in October 2023. What's visible in Hebron is not an anomaly but the leading edge of a structural campaign — displacement, economic destruction, institutional dismantling, and now cultural erasure — that makes return increasingly impossible.
