Netanyahu Imports the Camp Model for a Hebron Lockdown

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a full West Bank lockdown on October 23, 2026, after a Hebron gunfight killed two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinian gunmen. He then told the army to empty a Hebron neighborhood the way it emptied three West Bank refugee camps, four days before the October 27 election.

Twenty Minutes at the Judea Junction

The shooting started about 7:30 a.m. at a temporary army checkpoint on Route 35, at Hebron’s northern gate, also called the Judea Junction and Farsh al-Hawa. Two men from Hebron left a car with Israeli plates on a side street, took cover among buildings, and opened fire on a reserve force from the Home Front Command’s Search and Rescue Brigade.

The fight ran more than 20 minutes. Troops from the Ari Battalion (775) were on vehicle checks when the gunmen, later named by Israeli army radio as Hamouda Jaaba and Firas Jaaba, both 27 and from the same extended family, used an M16 rifle and a handgun. A deputy battalion commander, a company commander, and an officer from the Paratroopers’ 101st Battalion who ran in from nearby killed both men.

The army later said Staff Sergeant Ron Yonatan Roytman, 23, a squad commander from Ashkelon, and Sergeant Yuval Shai Svilem, 20, a combat soldier from Hod Hasharon, had died. Three other soldiers from the battalion were lightly injured and taken to hospitals in Jerusalem. Five soldiers were hit in all; two of them died.

FRIDAY MORNING AT THE CHECKPOINT

1. About 7:30 a.m., October 23, 2026: Two Hebron residents reach a temporary checkpoint at the city’s exit on Route 35.
2. The next 20 minutes: They fire on Ari Battalion troops; the army later says a large stock of ammunition in their car was meant for a bigger attack on civilians on Highway 35.
3. After the gunmen are killed: Hebron’s gates are shut, Highway 35 is blocked both ways, and searches spread through the city.
4. Late morning: Netanyahu cancels Likud campaign events, orders a Hebron cordon, and tells forces to prepare a lockdown of the whole West Bank.

Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the army chief of staff, called it a serious attack and said the soldiers’ speed had stopped something worse. Israeli officials described the pair as Hamas-linked. Hamas praised a “heroic” shooting in Hebron and called on armed men to fire on soldiers and settlers, without taking formal responsibility.

Netanyahu’s first order went out after a meeting with the defense minister, Zamir, the Shin Bet director, the national security adviser, and Central Command.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

"I have just concluded a security assessment with the Minister of Defense, the IDF Chief of Staff, the Director of the Shin Bet, the National Security Advisor, and the Commander of the IDF Central Command.

It appears that Hamas terrorists were…

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 23, 2026

Netanyahu Imports the Camp Model Into Hebron

He then drove to the scene with Defense Minister Israel Katz and raised the scale. The response would not stop at a cordon around one junction. He said the army would use on a Hebron neighborhood the method already used in West Bank refugee camps that the government calls terror strongholds.

We are going to implement the successful and aggressive model we used in the refugee camps, which are essentially terrorist strongholds. That is exactly what we will do here, in a neighborhood in Hebron from which the terrorists emerged. We will evacuate the residents, go from house to house, remove the weapons there, and address and demolish all terrorist infrastructure.

Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister, video statement from Hebron

Katz said the same neighborhood would be emptied and its militant infrastructure destroyed on the pattern of the Jenin refugee camp. Netanyahu added a siege on Hebron and nearby Halhul, and said the government would consider pushing the model into other cities. He also said illegal buildings along roads would be cleared faster because, in his words, they threaten Israeli forces.

Hebron holds more than 200,000 people. A refugee camp raid that empties streets and knocks through houses is a different tool when it is aimed at a neighborhood inside a city that size. That is the step the morning’s orders add to a checkpoint shooting: not only who fired, but which civilian streets are now on the same list as Jenin.

Hebron, Halhul and a City Two Hours Away

By afternoon, the closure was already wider than the junction. Palestinian officials said iron gates had shut every entrance and exit in the Hebron governorate. The army sealed Hebron and Halhul. Highway 35 was closed both ways. Vehicle checks reached Jenin, Nablus, and Jericho. In Ramallah, about two hours from the shooting, soldiers blocked almost every way in and out once the first reports landed.

WHERE THE CLOSURE LANDED

A lockdown of that width does not track the range of an M16 at one checkpoint. It tracks a political map. Workers, patients, and traders who had no link to Farsh al-Hawa lose the day along with the neighborhood Netanyahu named. That is the cost Hamas can use, and it is also the cost the cabinet chose.

The new order sits on a system that was already thick. The UN humanitarian office counted 925 movement obstacles as of December 2025 across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, affecting 3.4 million Palestinians. That tally is 43 percent above the 647-obstacle average of the previous 20 years.

WHAT THOSE 925 OBSTACLES ARE

• Staffed checkpoints: 89 run around the clock, and 34 of those 89 stand in Hebron’s H2 area, where about 7,000 Palestinians already live under tight rules.
• Partial checkpoints: 218 operate on and off; most of them have gates.
• Road gates: 232 in all, 159 of them often shut.
• Other blocks: Earth mounds, roadblocks, trenches, and barriers fill the rest of the count, with West Bank access restrictions as mapped in December 2025.

Mustafa Barghouti, the Palestinian politician, said Netanyahu was turning every city and village into a small prison and that people cannot reach olive groves they own. He blamed the government, and named Netanyahu, Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, said soldiers detained three people in later Hebron house raids after an earlier round of arrests.

Why Smotrich Can Order Demolitions in an Hour

Smotrich holds the finance ministry and a defense-ministry file over civilian life in the West Bank, including settlement planning. He did not wait for a cabinet vote on the buildings beside the junction. “Following the attack, I have ordered the immediate demolition of a wide row of illegal Arab structures adjacent to the attack site,” he said. “The order will be carried out within the next hour and will take place throughout the afternoon hours.”

He then asked for a campaign he compared to Gaza and Lebanon. “There is no other option but a comprehensive military campaign in Judea and Samaria to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, collect weapons and eliminate terrorists,” he said. He warned against a security idea that, in his words, might bring a new October 7 in the West Bank, and said that campaign would be among the first steps he would demand from the next government.

Ben-Gvir called for the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority to be taken apart and for Israel to take full control of the West Bank. Soldiers raided the Jaaba family home and other houses tied to the gunmen, and the army prepared maps for demolitions of those homes. Journalists near the site came under investigation, and politicians arrived in Hebron as the cordon hardened.

Yariv Oppenheimer, former director of Peace Now, said he expected house demolitions, a curfew, more arrests, and settlers trying to hit Palestinians in revenge. He said Netanyahu would use the attack to tell Israeli voters the government would be strong in Hebron. The demolition clock Smotrich set is how that message gets built in concrete before anyone counts ballots.

33,000 People Still Cannot Go Home

The “successful model” Netanyahu named is not a theory. In January 2025 the army launched Operation Iron Wall in the northern West Bank. It went into the Jenin refugee camp, then Tulkarm camp and Nur Shams. UN human rights reporting found the operations forcibly displaced more than 33,000 people from those three camps. They have not been allowed back.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, petitioning the High Court, called that wave the largest mass displacement since 1967 in the West Bank. On October 11, 2026, the court ordered the state to give a timetable for return and to answer how humanitarian needs would be met. The state’s earlier filing said the army was preparing long-term control inside the camps and that conditions for a pullout had not been reached.

Ten days before the Hebron shooting, Netanyahu stood near Tulkarm and answered the court in public. “These are not residents, these are terrorists,” he said of the people who used to live in the camp.

THE MODEL NOW NAMED FOR HEBRON

If that sequence holds inside Hebron, the junction shooting becomes the opening of a city-level emptying, not a closed file on two gunmen. The camps show how long “temporary” can last once residents are out and the army stays in.

The Vote Is Tuesday and the Raid Has No Date

Israel votes on October 27, the first Knesset election since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Netanyahu cancelled Friday’s campaign stops and stood in Hebron instead. He said enemies had been trying to strike before the vote, and that soldiers had stopped them with their bodies. He also said he and Katz had reviewed an army plan “on a very broad scale, unlike anything carried out since the Six-Day War.” The army was ready, he said. “We will determine the timing, but it is coming.”

He tied the guns to settlement brick. “We are going to destroy terrorist infrastructure and build the infrastructure for Jewish communities,” he said, citing plans for more than 100 communities and more than 100 farms.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The dead: Two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinian gunmen were killed at the Judea Junction on October 23, 2026.
• The order: Hebron and Halhul are under siege, a West Bank lockdown was ordered, and a Hebron neighborhood is slated for a camp-style emptying.
• The vote: The election is October 27, four days after the shooting.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The demolitions: Smotrich set an afternoon timetable for roadside buildings; completion was not independently confirmed.
• The city raid: Evacuation of the named Hebron neighborhood had been ordered, not shown as finished.
• The 1967-scale operation: Netanyahu said it is coming and gave no start date.

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador, said he did not think the shooting would move Tuesday’s race unless the death toll had been much higher, because the West Bank is already priced into how people vote. Israelis know, he said, that the territory is “on the brink of explosion.” He also said Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu want a lasting wartime mood.

The election has a date on the calendar. The raid Netanyahu compared to 1967 does not. Between those two facts sits a sealed Ramallah, a Hebron neighborhood on a camp list, and a cabinet that spent the last hours before a vote turning one checkpoint into a territory-wide closure.