# IDF Says Hebron Gunmen Had Weapons for a Bigger Attack, as Israel's First Post-October 7 Election Nears

> Israel's military says the two men who killed two soldiers at a Hebron checkpoint were carrying weapons meant for an attack on civilians, and the demolition operation that followed is now expected to run for several days, displacing more than 2,200 residents days before the first election since October 7.

- Source: Israel Today
- Canonical URL: https://israeltoday.news/article/idf-hebron-gunmen-weapons-civilian-attack-plot-election
- Author: Amir Doron
- Section: Security
- Published: 2026-10-25T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T10:00:00.000Z
- Tags: Hebron, West Bank, Elections

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Israel's military said the two gunmen who killed two soldiers at a Hebron checkpoint on 23 October were found with weapons in their car and had likely been planning an attack on Israeli civilians before they were stopped. Both men were shot dead at the scene. The detail reframes the checkpoint attack from an isolated ambush into a plot that was interrupted rather than completed, which is the justification Israeli forces have given for the scale of what followed.

What followed is a demolition operation near the attack site that the military says will run for several days, not a single sweep. The Hebron municipality puts the toll of that operation at more than 2,200 people displaced, including nearly 300 children under eighteen, a count that has grown since the operation began and is still open rather than final.

Hebron is not an ordinary backdrop for this kind of operation. It is the only West Bank city where Jewish settlers live inside a dense Palestinian population under Israeli military protection, which makes any large scale demolition and lockdown there carry a charge the same operation would not carry somewhere else in the territory.

The timing folds two different calendars into one. This is Israel's first election since the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023 that started the war in Gaza, and voters go to the polls on 27 October with a West Bank operation still running and a displacement count still rising, which means the government campaigning for re-election is also, at the same moment, the government managing the consequences of the week before the vote.

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Originally published by Israel Today. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://israeltoday.news/article/idf-hebron-gunmen-weapons-civilian-attack-plot-election.