Rights Groups Warn of Health Risks as Hebron Operation Displaces Palestinian Families

Several Israeli human rights organizations told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that the health and wellbeing of around 1,200 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank is at risk because of forced displacement carried out after a terror attack by two attackers last week.

The IDF said its operation in the Al-Jaladah and Ein Deir Baha neighborhoods, near the military checkpoint at the entrance to Hebron, is meant to locate terrorists and weapons and will include demolitions. The Palestinian Authority condemned the operation as "collective punishment," and Palestinian officials warned of a significant impact on civilian life.

Yousef Zouhair Al-Jabari, head of Hebron's municipality, told Reuters that around 1,300 more people faced losing their homes, in addition to the 1,200 already displaced. He alleged that the military had demolished shops, factories, homes and roads in the city.

Milena Ansari, director of the Palestinian Territory Department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), said the effects were already being felt by sick and vulnerable residents. PHRI cited the testimony of Osama Abu Sbeih, an ambulance driver with the private Al-Salam Ambulance service in Hebron, who described several cases in which patients could not reach urgent care in time. One was a six-month-old baby with a lung infection who waited two days to be transferred from a hospital in Ramallah to Hebron.

"Crews are relying on passing patients from one ambulance to another at checkpoints," Ansari said. She added that even a mobile clinic that normally travels across the West Bank could not reach Msafaryatta for a scheduled medical day. "But it's the long-term damage, which is a bit less visible but is as serious as what we're seeing right now on the ground," she said.

Ansari said she fears the displacement, now described as temporary, could become long-term. She warned that people staying in temporary shelters or in the crowded homes of relatives are at risk, noting that many shelters lack proper heating. Heading into winter without adequate housing could drive respiratory infections, she said. Patients with chronic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes, as well as those on dialysis, could struggle badly if the disruption continues, and routine breakdowns can create emergencies for them.

She also pointed to the psychological toll, especially on children forced out of their homes in the middle of the night. According to Ansari, those hardships last well after an operation ends.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) sent a letter to senior IDF officials, including Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, which was seen by the Post. It argued that there is no evidence linking the houses being destroyed to the attackers behind last week's violence. ACRI also raised concern over Palestinian claims that some residents were removed from their homes at night and left without shelter, that worshippers were cut off from the Ibrahimi mosque, and that thousands could not reach work or school.

"No attack, however grave, gives the military license to punish an entire city," said Noa Sattath, ACRI's executive director. She said families uninvolved in the attack are being driven out and their homes demolished, while ministers present this to voters a few days before the election as the price Palestinians must pay. "That is collective punishment. The military must stop it and let these families return home now, and ACRI will use every legal means available to make sure it does," she said.