Why is Israel launching a new military operation in the occupied West Bank?

Israel’s military has launched another major operation in the occupied West Bank, during which it plans to carry out mass arrests, demolish homes and forcibly displace residents.

The operation comes after an attack at an Israeli military checkpoint near Hebron on Friday in which two Israeli soldiers were killed. The two suspected Palestinian gunmen were shot dead.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who ordered a full lockdown of the West Bank, said Israeli forces would go house-to-house in the Hebron neighbourhood that the suspected attackers came from.

“We will act to destroy this place, ⁠to change it completely,” he said.

Israeli rights group B’Tselem warned the Israeli government’s planned offensive amounts to “collective punishment and acts that could constitute war crimes”.

Here’s what we know about the Israeli military operation.

What’s happening in the West Bank?

Israel’s military announced late on Friday that a major “counterterrorism” operation, involving Israeli soldiers, police and other security agents, was under way in the Hebron area of the occupied West Bank.

It said the “targeted” campaign would last “several days”, in addition to operations in “dozens” of other areas across the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier said Israeli forces would go “house-to-house” in the Hebron neighbourhood where the suspects involved in Friday’s attack came from, replicating tactics previously used in refugee camps in the northern West Bank. The operation will involve demolitions and forced displacement, he said.

By Saturday morning, Israeli forces had raided at least 15 towns in the northern West Bank, including Nablus, Jenin, Tubas and Qalqilya, arresting dozens of Palestinians, Al Jazeera correspondents reported.

On Saturday, videos posted on Telegram by Palestinians in the al-Jalda area of Hebron city showed Israeli soldiers standing guard and military vehicles, shopping trolleys and other objects blocking the roads.

Israeli forces in the area had also sent in a bulldozer that could be seen alongside other Israeli military vehicles.

Earlier, Israeli bulldozers wrecked a three-storey building in Hebron, while ordering hundreds of Palestinian families to leave their homes in the Ein Deir Bahha area of the city and its surroundings.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the West Bank, said there was “a lot of anxiety” in the occupied territory as people largely avoided going into the streets.

Why has Israel locked down the West Bank?

The measure is a response to Friday’s attack at an Israeli checkpoint near Hebron.

But it also takes place just days before Israel’s election on Tuesday, during which Israel had already been planning to lock down the occupied territory, reported The Times of Israel.

During the lockdown, Netanyahu said Israeli troops would conduct “extensive waves of arrests” and pursue Hamas fighters “wherever they are and at all times”.

The operation comes amid signs that Israel and its ally the United States are preparing for a potential new wave of attacks on Iran.

According to The New York Times, the US and Israel have drafted plans for a campaign of attacks on Iran that would take place after the US midterm elections on November 3.

Citing unnamed US officials and other informed sources, The New York Times reported that the US and Israel have intensified drills for a “a short but intensive operation” against Iran, with potential targets to include the country’s “energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and missile and drone arsenal”.

US President Donald Trump appeared to confirm on Friday that the US was weighing a new military campaign against Iran. Speaking at a rally, Trump said, “We may do another little epic fury,” using the codename of the US-Israel war against Iran that started with attacks across the country on February 28.

How have attacks on Palestinians escalated in recent weeks?

Israeli settler pogroms against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been rife in recent weeks, coinciding with the annual olive harvest season.

On Thursday, the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said it had recorded 409 attacks by Israeli forces or settlers against Palestinian farmers, their land, olive trees and agricultural equipment so far during October. It called the attacks part of a pattern of “direct violence to force farmers from their land”.

Visiting Western officials have also found themselves caught up in the violence.

On October 17, Israeli settlers assaulted European diplomats, including a French mayor, near the Palestinian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank as they visited Palestinian olive farmers. Then on Wednesday, US Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander was briefly detained by the Israeli military while volunteering to help Palestinian farmers harvest olives.

What has the response been to Israel’s West Bank operation?

The operation has been cheered on by far-right Israeli officials, but criticised by the United Nations and human rights watchdogs.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a position within Israel’s Ministry of Defence where he oversees the administration of the occupied West Bank and its settlements, called for Israel’s large-scale offensive in the West Bank to proceed “exactly like in Gaza”.

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority to be “dismantled” and for tighter restrictions on Palestinian movement.

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative party, said incitement from far-right Israeli ministers was making the situation worse.

He told Al Jazeera the West Bank lockdown was turning every city and village into “a small prison”, a form of collective punishment that would “lead to explosions”.

Mayy El Sheikh, spokesperson for the UN’s Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian territory, said Israel’s move to lock down the West Bank marked “yet another episode in a never-ending stream of suffocating measures making life more and more unbearable for Palestinians”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, through his spokesperson, also expressed concern about West Bank closures that would restrict Palestinians’ “access to basic services and livelihoods”.

B’Tselem sounded the alarm over Israeli “plans for collective punishment and acts that could constitute war crimes”.

“The world cannot stand by as Israel continues its assault on Palestinians, waiting for yet more neighbourhoods to be emptied and erased before intervening, despite what we have already witnessed in Gaza and the northern West Bank,” said the rights group.