THE NEW YORK TIMES: Palestinian Gunmen Open Fire on Israelis in the West Bank, Officials Say

Palestinian gunmen opened fire on Israelis in the West Bank on Friday, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to promise a major offensive in the Israeli-occupied territory, days before a pivotal national election.

The Israeli military said that two soldiers had been killed and that its forces had shot dead two Palestinian assailants near a checkpoint in Hebron, the most populous city in the West Bank.

Three other Israeli soldiers were wounded in the attack, the military said.

Mr Netanyahu visited the site of the attacks and said Israel would carry out a major operation in a neighbourhood of Hebron, where he said the attackers had come from.

“We will evacuate the residents; we will go home by home and remove weapons,” he said.

“All of the weapons infrastructure will be dealt with and demolished.”

“We are going to implement the successful and aggressive model that we employed in the refugee camps,” Mr Netanyahu said, referring to the Israeli military’s offensives in Jenin and Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank.

Since early 2025, the military has conducted a massive crackdown there, displacing tens of thousands of people, demolishing homes and tearing up roads.

The military has said it was targeting militants. The offensive has left parts of those cities bearing resemblance to destruction in the Gaza Strip.

On Friday, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, said that Israeli “troops’ swift action prevented an even more serious attack and further harm to civilians and security forces.”

A large amount of ammunition was found in a vehicle used by the attackers, the military said.

Soldiers and police officers have launched “offensive counterterrorism operations in the Hebron area,” the military said, adding that soldiers were operating in the homes of the assailants and other suspects.

Mr Netanyahu ordered the security forces to cordon off Hebron and to prepare for a “lockdown” of the territory starting Friday.

He added that security forces were conducting extensive arrests.

Israeli analysts expressed concern that Mr Netanyahu’s calculations in responding to the attack could be influenced by the election next Tuesday. His hard-right coalition is in a close race against opposition parties.

“The losses were heavy and painful, but the characteristics of the terrorist attack are not unusual,” said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer specialising in Palestinian affairs.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve faced such an attack.”

Mr Milshtein said he worried Mr Netanyahu was seeking to escalate in the West Bank for political considerations, but he emphasised that it was too early to tell whether the military would carry out the action the Israeli leader outlined.

Gadi Eisenkot, Mr Netanyahu’s leading challenger and a former military chief, praised the “heroism” of the Israeli soldiers for preventing a bigger attack.

Bezalel Smotrich, a hard-line minister in Mr Netanyahu’s government and a settler leader, said that the Israeli authorities were demolishing Palestinian homes near the site of the attack, asserting that they had been constructed without permission.

“It will be clear that there’s a very high price for terrorism harming Israeli citizens,” he said.

The homes being demolished were located in Area C, a part of the West Bank under Israeli control, according to an Israeli security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

Palestinian landowners have long said that Israeli authorities refuse to provide them permits to build in Area C, which makes up roughly 60 per cent of the West Bank.

Yousef Jabari, the mayor of Hebron, said that Israeli authorities had closed off every entrance and exit to the city and shut down the Palestinian-run part of the Ibrahimi Mosque, a shrine in the city revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians as the burial place of Abraham. Jews call the site the Tomb of Patriarchs.

“This is collective punishment against innocent people,” Mr Jabari said in an interview.

“Why should the entire city be besieged? Why should people with health appointments or social events in other cities be forced to stay home?”

Garbage trucks were unable to reach a dumpsite outside the city Friday because of the Israel restrictions on movement into and out of the city, according to Tareq Shuqair, an adviser to Jabari.

The shooting took place amid a broader rise in violence in the West Bank since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and the devastating war in Gaza that followed.

Palestinian gunmen have shot and stabbed Israel civilians and soldiers.

Last month, an Israeli man was shot and killed in the central West Bank, according to Israeli authorities, who said they had detained a Palestinian suspect over the attack.

Extremist Jewish settlers have carried out attacks on Palestinians, setting mosques and homes ablaze, stealing livestock and cutting down olive trees. That aggression has forced entire Palestinian communities to flee.

Settler attacks against Palestinians have intensified in recent weeks during the annual olive harvest, a cultural touchstone for Palestinians and an economic lifeline for many families. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been injured in settler attacks in 2026, according to the United Nations.

Hamas praised the attack Friday as a “heroic operation,” but it stopped short of taking responsibility.

The militant group also called on Palestinians bearing weapons to shoot “bullets at the chest of the occupiers, their soldiers and their criminal settlers.”