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Israel plans to close all land crossings with the West Bank and bar Palestinian workers from settlements and industrial zones on Tuesday's, Oct. 27, election day, the Israeli military said Sunday.
The lockdown comes as an Israeli military operation in Hebron, launched after Palestinian gunmen killed two soldiers, has displaced around 2,000 Palestinians, according to Defense Minister Israel Katz.
Israel’s political leadership approved the defense establishment’s recommendation for a complete ban on Palestinian workers entering all settlements and industrial zones on election day, along with closing all West Bank land crossings with Israel, the military said.
The army said it would enforce "a ban on the entry and exit of Palestinian workers throughout Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, including industrial zones, as well as the closure of all land crossings throughout Election Day."
Judea and Samaria is the term many in Israel use for the West Bank.
Starting Sunday and through Monday, Palestinians with work permits will "not be permitted to enter Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley for work," the army said.
Industrial zones and a "limited number of other approved areas" are exempt from the two-day ban, the military said.
About 9,000 Palestinians hold permits to work in settlements or nearby industrial zones, according to data from last year.
The crossings are set to reopen and the worker ban lifted after election day, the military said.
Israeli forces sealed off Hebron and nearby Halhul on Friday after two Palestinians attacked a checkpoint, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding three, according to Israeli figures. Israeli forces killed both attackers.
Katz told public broadcaster KAN that around 2,000 Palestinians had been displaced from their homes in Hebron. "They will not be allowed to return until we’ve finished dealing with all the Hamas issues in Hebron," he said.
The Hebron municipality said around 1,500 people from 250 families had been forced from the Deir Bahha and al-Jilda neighborhoods since Friday and that the army planned to displace another 2,500.
Troops took over homes in southern Hebron for use as barracks and observation posts, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
Hamas did not claim the checkpoint attack but hailed it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces a tight race in Tuesday’s vote, said during a visit to Hebron on Friday that the army was preparing a large-scale offensive.
"We will do here what we have not done before. We will apply the successful offensive model we implemented in the refugee camps," he said, referring to military operations in the northern West Bank.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also oversees civilian affairs in the West Bank, said he ordered "the immediate demolition of a row of illegal structures."
"Anyone who messes with us will quickly understand that he will pay a painful price," Smotrich wrote on X.
Higazi Shawer al-Tamimi, a 70-year-old shopkeeper in the Ein Deir Baha neighborhood, said soldiers woke him at 1 a.m. and ordered him to leave.
"I asked them how long the evacuation would last. They said: ‘Until further notice,’" he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"For example, my wife’s mother, who is 90 years old and lives in the area, had to be carried out because she is ill," he added.
Tamimi said Netanyahu wanted to win the election on "the blood of the Palestinian people." "I have lived through all the stages of the occupation, and I will die here," he said.
His brother, Khaled Shawer al-Tamimi, 68, left with his son. "The army was announcing through loudspeakers: ‘Leave the area.’ So we left," he said, adding, "We have never seen or even heard a single gunshot being fired."
Hebron’s education directorate suspended classes Sunday and Monday, and the municipality said garbage was piling up because the city’s entrances were closed.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem said Israel is extending an "ethnic cleansing" campaign to Hebron. It said the northern West Bank model has displaced more than 33,000 Palestinians.
"Israeli leaders are openly declaring their intentions, and actions on the ground have already begun," B’Tselem said. "The world cannot stand by as Israel continues its assault on Palestinians, waiting for yet more neighborhoods to be emptied and erased before intervening."
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry described Israeli threats to expand displacement as attempts to repeat the "Nakba."
The Palestinian Authority called for international pressure on Israel to protect residents.
British Labour lawmaker John McDonnell urged the U.K. government to lead "full sanctions and (the) political isolation of Israel."
"As Netanyahu starts the process of turning the West Bank into a second Gaza, our government has to act," he wrote on X. "The message needs to go out that this extension of the genocide will not be tolerated."
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