Two Palestinian gunmen attacked an Israeli military checkpoint outside Hebron on Friday, killing two soldiers and injuring three before being killed themselves. Within hours, Israeli forces began demolishing the Ein Deir Baha district, the alleged home neighbourhood of the attackers. By Saturday afternoon, the Hebron municipality estimated 35 hectares — 86 acres — had been destroyed or marked for destruction, with approximately 1,500 people evicted and the entire city of 250,000 sealed by checkpoints. The scale of the response dwarfs the triggering event by orders of magnitude. Videos from residents show entire blocks flattened, houses marked with sprayed black crosses, bulldozers tearing down hillside walls, and a large residential building commandeered as a temporary military headquarters and draped in Israeli flags. The building belonged to a prominent Hebron family. Palestinian news agency Wafa reported plans to displace a further 2,500 people beyond those already evicted. The timing is impossible to separate from domestic Israeli politics. Elections are four days away. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the attack site and declared Israel would "act to destroy this place." Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — running for re-election with a smaller coalition party — had himself filmed in body armour in front of a building being demolished, announcing he had ordered "the immediate demolition of a wide row of illegal Arab structures adjacent to the attack site." Smotrich called for "a comprehensive military campaign … exactly like in Gaza and Lebanon." Collective punishment is the operative mechanism. The 300 evicted families, the sealed city, and the levelled hectares are not targeted at the two dead gunmen. Hebron civil rights activist Issa Amro, whose sister's family was among those displaced, stated plainly: "We are being collectively punished for something we neither did nor supported. Our suffering is being turned into political material for Israel's elections, while innocent families pay the price." Amro's framing captures the dual extraction at work: Palestinian civilian infrastructure is destroyed to produce Israeli electoral content. The demolished homes are simultaneously a military operation and a campaign event. Smotrich's body-armour photo-op in front of active demolitions makes the merger explicit — the destruction is the message. The municipality opened community halls and children's play areas to shelter the displaced. Some families found refuge with relatives. The Israeli army was approached for comment on the operations and on videos showing the extent of the devastation but no response was reported. The question Amro raised — whether this is "only election propaganda or a serious plan from decisions on what to do after the election" — identifies the structural ambiguity that makes this especially dangerous. If it is electoral theatre, 1,500 people lost their homes for a photo-op. If it is policy, it signals that the Gaza model of wholesale neighbourhood erasure is being extended to the West Bank. Neither answer is reassuring.
