Israeli Military Invades Hebron, Forces More Than 3,000 Palestinians From Homes

The Israeli military launched an invasion of the Palestinian city of Hebron last Friday after an attack on Israeli soldiers, according to the Palestine Policy Roundup, a weekly publication of the IMEU Policy Project dated October 28. The newsletter reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a lockdown of the West Bank and promised to destroy part of Hebron in response to the attack. The newsletter characterizes the invasion as part of Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign, a description it presents as its own assessment.

The newsletter states that more than 3,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes by Israeli military raids in the city. Hebron Mayor Yousef Jaabari said on Friday that the Israeli military had imposed a siege on the city and that Palestinians were not allowed to enter or leave the area. The newsletter also reports that Israel has restricted the movement of Palestinian workers across much of the West Bank and planned to close all crossings in the area during Israel’s election. Its reporting on displacement, which affects civilians, is a matter of protecting the vulnerable (Proverbs 31:8-9).

According to the newsletter, the Israeli military has either destroyed or plans to destroy 86 acres of the Ein Deir Baha neighborhood and flattened the nearby neighborhood of Farsh al-Hawa. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich published a video of himself standing in front of a demolished Palestinian home. The newsletter says Israeli soldiers are entering Palestinian homes and using them as barracks and observation posts, and that Israeli settlers have established new outposts on Palestinian land south of Hebron.

The newsletter reports that Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz explicitly invoked Israel’s destruction of the Jenin refugee camp in describing plans for Hebron, and that Katz also invoked Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon. It recalls that in January 2025, Israel invaded the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps days after agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza, and that the invasion forced more than 40,000 Palestinians from their homes. The newsletter says Human Rights Watch found that Israel’s invasion amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. It also cites a recent UN Human Rights report that found Israel’s actions suggested a “deliberate strategy” of forced displacement, which it said appeared to amount to collective punishment and ethnic cleansing.

The newsletter also reports casualty figures for Gaza, attributing each to its source. It cites the Palestinian Ministry of Health for 1,522 people killed since the beginning of Trump’s Gaza plan and for 74,555 killed during Israel’s military campaign, which it calls a genocide. It attributes a count of at least 5,474 Israeli violations of the Gaza plan to the Gaza Government Media Office.

In a separate item, the newsletter reports that last Wednesday the Israeli military detained congressional candidate Brad Lander along with dozens of American and Israeli rabbis and other activists in the West Bank. According to the newsletter, the delegation was helping Palestinian olive farmers reach their land near an Israeli settlement amid a surge of settler attacks. After about two hours of harvesting, soldiers arrived, checked the activists’ IDs, declared the area a closed military zone, and detained them. The newsletter says soldiers photographed the group’s ID cards and passports despite the delegation’s offer to comply and leave, and that the delegation had no way of knowing about the order in advance. It quotes Amnesty International as saying that closed military zones are a key strategy in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Palestinian landowners told reporters that it was the first time they had been able to reach their land since the start of what the newsletter calls Israel’s genocide in Gaza, because attacks by mobs of violent settlers had made the area too dangerous.

The newsletter also reports that Sen. Peter Welch led 11 senators in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The letter demands that the Trump administration act to secure the release of Abdelkareem Safi, a Palestinian American citizen and high school student whom the newsletter says the Israeli military has detained without charge.

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