Israel's military began largescale raids on the occupied West Bank on Friday, which it said would last several days and include searches and building demolitions, after two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinians were killed in a clash at a military checkpoint.
ICC fugitive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is locked in a tight race to keep his job in Tuesday's vote, having campaigned on promises to keep Israelis safe, and he and his right-wing allies visited the scene of the incident to pledge an even harder line on Palestinian resistance.
Israeli forces were searching targets and questioning suspects to "locate and dismantle terrorist infrastructure" in the Hebron area from where they said the attackers had emerged, according to a joint statement from the Israeli military and Shin Bet domestic security agency.
Forces were also "demolishing illegal structures that could pose a security threat at the site of the encounter", they said, adding that "counterterrorism operations" were underway at dozens of locations.
Netanyahu threatened on Friday to collectively punish the neighbourhood from where the attackers came by demolishing it.
Palestinian group Hamas, without claiming responsibility, praised Friday's attack on two Israeli soldiers as a "heroic operation" and called on supporters to carry out more.
A Hebron-based AFP photographer heading to another assignment witnessed the gun battle break out at the Farsh al-Hawa checkpoint between the soldiers and two men armed with a handgun and an automatic rifle.
Israeli forces eventually shot dead the two Palestinians.
Netanyahu later ordered a lockdown in the occupied West Bank.
Visiting Hebron, the premier said he and Defence Minister Israel Katz were "considering a very extensive IDF operation in Judea and Samaria, such as has not been carried out since" the 1967 war.
The first step would see Israeli forces "enter the neighbourhood from which the terrorists came, evacuate the residents, go from house to house, and destroy the terrorist infrastructure", he said.
The military would apply a model previously used in refugee camps in the northern West Bank, he said, the scene of a large-scale assault in January 2025 that forcibly displaced thousands of Palestinians.
Israeli rights group B'Tselem called for urgent international pressure to prevent Israel from pursuing "plans for collective punishment and acts that could constitute war crimes".
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, through a spokesman, voiced concern over Israeli closures that affect Palestinian livelihoods and called for a halt to violence on all sides.
'Exactly like Gaza'
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a position within the defence ministry, called for a large-scale military offensive in the West Bank "exactly like in Gaza".
He said authorities were "sending an unequivocal message to our enemies: if you mess with the Jews, you will pay a very painful price".
National Security Minister and far-right firebrand Itamar Ben Gvir said the Ramallah-based "Palestinian Authority must be dismantled".
"It is impossible for there to be an authority within Judea and Samaria that incites murder, calls for murder, and works for murder," he told reporters.
No evidence suggests that the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank, was connected to Friday's attack.
Both Ben Gvir and Smotrich are prominent advocates of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have proliferated under Netanyahu's government.
Netanyahu vowed to "pursue Hamas terrorists" everywhere, adding: "You have no place to hide."
Israel vowed to obliterate the group in the wake of the 7 October attacks, later a war on Gaza that has killed over 74,000 Palestinians and been determined a genocide by UN experts and leading rights groups.
The army crackdown on the occupied West Bank comes as Israeli settlers, often under army protection, continue attacks against Palestinian olive harvesters.
According to an AFP tally based on data from the Palestinian health ministry, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,117 Palestinians in the territory since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.