Israel readies sweeping West Bank offensive days before election

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Friday that a large-scale military operation in the occupied West Bank is on the way, after two Israeli soldiers were killed in a shooting attack in Hebron just days before Tuesday’s general election.

Speaking in a video address from the scene, wearing a bulletproof vest, Netanyahu said he and the defence minister were planning an operation on a scale unseen in the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War. “We will set the timing, but it is on its way,” he said.

He ordered the army to seal off Hebron entirely.

In the immediate term, Netanyahu announced an operation modelled on those carried out since 2025 in refugee camps in the northern West Bank, involving the evacuation of residents and a massive deployment of troops. In the neighbourhood where the two attackers came from, “we will evacuate residents and go house to house,” he said. The army said it had already launched what it called counterterrorism operations across the territory.

Two soldiers killed at checkpoint

The attack took place on Friday morning at an army checkpoint at a major road junction north of Hebron. Two assailants dressed in black, one armed with an assault rifle and the other with a pistol, opened fire on soldiers before being shot dead.

Two soldiers, aged 20 and 23, were killed and three others lightly wounded, according to the army, which had initially reported five injured, two of them seriously.

No group immediately claimed responsibility. Hamas praised what it called a “heroic operation” without claiming it, and urged Palestinians in the West Bank to mobilise fully and carry out similar attacks. Netanyahu vowed to hunt down members of the Islamist movement “everywhere and at all times.”

His main election rival, former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, praised the soldiers’ courage, saying they had prevented a major attack.

Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, is one of the most volatile places in the territory. It is divided into two sectors: one administered by the Palestinian Authority, the other controlled by the Israeli army, where Israeli settlers live in the heart of the city.

The attack and the looming offensive add a new security dimension to the final days of a tightly contested campaign.