West Bank Evictions: Netanyahu Orders 1967-Scale Push After Checkpoint Shootout

Two Israeli soldiers died and three others were wounded after gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint near Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

The attack has triggered an immediate escalation in the conflict, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising a military operation on a scale not seen since the Six-Day War of 1967.

Speaking from the site of the shooting, Netanyahu stated that Israel would act to demolish the area and change it completely, comparing the planned push to last year's assault on refugee camps in the northern West Bank.

Bulldozers began flattening homes near the shooting site on Friday afternoon, forcing hundreds of Palestinians to leave their neighborhood.

The Israeli military reported that soldiers were behind concrete barriers when two attackers opened fire, resulting in a 20-minute firefight that ended with the attackers' deaths.

The situation is complicated by Israel's national elections scheduled for October 27, where polls show Netanyahu and rival Gadi Eisenkot in a tight race with neither holding enough support to form a government.

Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, described the pre-election strategy as Netanyahu positioning himself as the protector of Israel through harsh measures.

Citrinowicz characterized the eviction of families without evidence linking them to the gunmen as collective punishment, arguing that the goal should be to arrest specific attackers while supporting the local economy to provide stability.