Benjamin Netanyahu and ministers promise demolitions and forced displacement after deadly gunfight

Israel has launched a campaign of collective punishment against Palestinians in Hebron after gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers and injured three near a checkpoint outside the city.

Benjamin Netanyahu announced a siege on Hebron and neighbouring Halhul and said residents of the gunmen’s home neighbourhoods would all be forced out. He promised mass demolitions of homes.

Rights groups say the planned 1.4km route, which ends at compound run by far-right settler group Elad, will displace Palestinians and reshape the cultural landscape

A fifth foreign company has pulled out of a plan to build a cable car from West to East Jerusalem that threatens to involve the seizure of land and property rights from dozens of Palestinian families along its route, but local authorities insist the scheme is proceeding as planned.

The project appeared to have stalled for four years until late September, just weeks before Israel’s 27 October elections, when the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA) issued a notice of intent to award a contract without a public tender to ROPES, a cable car engineering consultancy based in South Tyrol, Italy.