Nearly 2,000 Palestinians Displaced in Hebron as Israeli Forces Seize Homes in Army Sweep

Nearly 2,000 Palestinians have been displaced by an Israeli army sweep in Hebron, the biggest city in the occupied West Bank, according to the Hebron municipality. The municipality said 370 families had been displaced from the Ein Deir Baha district.

The sweep followed a gun attack on Friday on an Israeli military checkpoint in which two soldiers were killed. Both men alleged to have carried out the attack were killed on the spot, according to the report.

After the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made televised visits to the site. They vowed abrupt and sweeping retribution, and the prime minister warned of military operations on a scale the West Bank has not seen in nearly 60 years of occupation.

Within hours, the whole city of 250,000 people had been sealed off. Farsh al-Hawa, the neighbourhood closest to Friday's attack, was flattened; by Sunday morning nothing was left but rubble of an industrial area that had held car workshops, a big ceramics plant and other enterprises.

At the same time, Ein Deir Baha, a district a few kilometres away, was being systematically emptied. The district was allegedly home to at least one of the two men involved in the attack.

Fahed Ahmaro, the imam from the local mosque, said he was woken at about midnight by loudspeakers from military vehicles telling homeowners to vacate their homes immediately for their own safety. Thirty members of his family lived in his house; he rushed his frail mother and some of his grandchildren to his daughter's house in another part of Hebron.

Ahmaro said that on his way back a neighbour phoned to tell him the army had blown up the gates to the house. 'I don't know what they have done to it by now. I heard they destroyed the furniture,' he said. At midday on Sunday he was in a Hebron market shopping for a change of clothes for his grandchildren, uncertain how long the family's exile would last.

In its official comments, the Israeli army said the displaced population had left voluntarily and that 'civilians who wished to evacuate were permitted to temporarily leave the area'. Ahmaro was outraged at the suggestion he had any choice about fleeing. 'Never, never, never. Why should I leave my house?' he asked.

Abdul Halim al-Tamimi, 77, said he tried to stay put when the military came at 1.30am, but his family was told they had only 10 minutes to vacate their home. 'An intelligence officer told me if we didn't go, they would displace us the same way they have done it in Gaza,' he said. The family left at 3am on Saturday; on Sunday morning their substantial villa was festooned with large Israeli flags and ringed with military vehicles, and the army had turned it into its headquarters.

In its statement, the Israeli military claimed that 2,000 local people were from the Jaba'a clan, from which the gunmen were allegedly drawn, and which the army claimed was 'associated with Hamas'. The claim drew consternation and derision from people in Ein Deir Baha, who numbered the Jaba'a clan at 150 at most, with no known reputation for radicalism. 'We are from a completely different family. We are innocent people. We have nothing to do with the whole thing,' Tamimi said.

By Sunday evening, all roads in and out of the city remained closed to cars, with heavy steel barriers swung across them. Hebron's mayor, Yousef al-Jabari, said: 'It's collective punishment. They have dragged people from their houses, and they have prevented the media from getting into the district in order to cover up what is happening.' Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have no vote in Tuesday's Israeli elections, but their lives could be deeply affected by the outcome, the report said.