Israeli operation displaces over 2,600 in West Bank’s Hebron

Israeli forces have pressed ahead with a military operation and a lockdown in the Hebron area of the occupied West Bank since Friday, demolishing and destroying a number of Palestinian civilian and commercial facilities and causing heavy property losses, Palestinian officials said on Sunday. Hundreds of Palestinian families have been affected, with more than 2,000 civilians directly impacted.

The office of the Palestinian prime minister said that, citing data from the Hebron governorate, more than 2,670 Palestinians have been forcibly expelled from their homes in Hebron by Israeli forces, most of them women, children and elderly people. Some residents were beaten by Israeli soldiers when they tried to return home.

READ: Palestinians forced out of Hebron homes unprepared as Israeli operation unfolds

Apart from demolishing homes and expelling residents, Israeli forces have also intensively installed roadblocks and sealed iron gates, cutting off main roads and seriously disrupting local supply chains and the movement of people. Israeli settlers have also levelled land belonging to Palestinian residents in the southern Hebron area and pitched tents, in preparation for setting up an outpost for an Israeli settlement.

The Hebron governorate announced on Sunday that several cities in the area would set up joint emergency operations rooms running 24 hours a day, using all available municipal resources to help residents affected by the operation. It is also stepping up work on a legal document to be formally submitted to the International Criminal Court.

Palestinian officials also reported incidents elsewhere in the occupied West Bank of Israeli forces destroying Palestinian civilian property and Israeli settlers carrying out attacks. In a Palestinian village west of Ramallah, Israeli forces used heavy machinery to level large tracts of land and forcibly uprooted dozens of olive trees in the middle of the harvest season, for the construction of a road unilaterally planned by Israel leading to a nearby Israeli settlement.

In a Palestinian village near Nablus, Israeli settlers attacked and detained several Palestinian civilians picking olives and forcibly transferred them into a nearby Israeli settlement.