Bulldozers destroy homes as Israel cracks down in West Bank

Videos captured the moment bulldozers began destroying the property. The scenes unfolded on the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was standing in another part of Hebron, dressed in a military-style vest, and pledged to step up operations in the occupied West Bank.

After a shootout that left two Israeli soldiers and two gunmen dead, Netanyahu said the army would enter neighborhoods where the attackers had emerged, evacuate residents and go “house to house” to deal with any threats.

“We are going to destroy the terrorist infrastructure and we are going to build the infrastructure for settlement,” he told the cameras, speaking days before Israel’s crucial Oct. 27 elections that will decide whether he remains in power.

Since then, Israeli forces have “sealed all entrances” to the city, “making it impossible for anyone to enter or leave,” according to Yousef al-Jabari, the Palestinian mayor of Hebron.

He told NBC News that a key mosque had been forced to close and residents in some areas had been evicted from their homes, adding that soldiers had “effectively besieged an entire densely populated area and were demanding that its residents leave.”

Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank and is home to approximately 320,000 residents.

Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem said around 240 Palestinian families were forced to leave their homes in the Jildah and Ein Deir Bahah neighborhoods of Hebron on Friday and Saturday.

“Soldiers have taken over many houses and remain there, raising Israeli flags on several buildings. Arrests and interrogations also continue,” the group said in a statement.

Tensions have soared in the West Bank in the weeks leading up to Israeli elections, with a wave of settler violence and military activity centered on the start of the olive harvest season. Palestinians, activists and American journalists are among those attacked and arrested.

Al-Jabari called the latest lockdown a “form of collective punishment” and suggested Netanyahu’s intervention was politically motivated.

“With Israeli elections just days away, Netanyahu is seeking to gain as many votes as possible by appeasing the settlers,” he said.

Netanyahu has long faced pressure from his far-right allies to take tougher stances in the West Bank. In his comments Friday, he praised the settlers as “heroic,” saying they were “an example to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel.”

The leader, facing a tough re-election battle, has focused much of his campaign ahead of Tuesday’s vote on security. His government has repeatedly warned of possible attacks from the country’s “enemies” in the run-up to the elections, without providing evidence.

Following Friday’s attack, he said he had “warned several weeks ago about attempts by our enemies to harm us, our civilians and our soldiers, in the run-up to the elections. That is what they tried to do here.”

UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told a press briefing on Friday that “the closures severely restrict Palestinians’ freedom of movement, access to basic services and livelihoods.”

Mayy El Sheikh, spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said in a statement Friday that the lockdown was “another episode in an endless stream of stifling measures making life increasingly unbearable for Palestinians.”

“This follows a pattern of collective punishment whenever Palestinians commit acts of violence against Israeli settlers or soldiers,” she said.

HA Hellyer, a research associate at the Royal United Services Institute in London, told NBC News that Netanyahu could show a “strong arm” ahead of the election by locking down the West Bank, but he said the link was unclear, noting that the main candidates in the election were broadly aligned.

Even if Netanyahu loses, he said, “I don’t expect any change in the West Bank.”

Israeli officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.