France

Paris, October 23, 2026. For the French press, the attack on Hebron comes at the worst moment in the Israeli campaign. Le Monde reports that on Friday, October 23, two assailants dressed in black opened fire on soldiers at a checkpoint, before being killed in a heavy shootout, witnessed by an AFP photographer. According to the Israeli army, two soldiers, aged 20 and 23, were killed and three others slightly injured; an initial report mentioned five injured. Hamas hailed an "heroic" action without claiming it.

The response of Benyamin Netanyahou dominates the accounts. He ordered an "immediate lockdown" of Hebron and asked the army to prepare the "total lockdown" of the West Bank. During a visit to the site, he mentioned, according to Le Monde, "an operation of very large scale, like none since the Six-Day War", with evacuation of inhabitants and house-to-house searches. His office claims that a "large-scale attack" was avoided. The army says it is conducting "anti-terrorist operations" in the homes of the assailants and other suspects.

The political calendar structures the reading. Sud Ouest, with AFP, writes that the attack "hits the end of the electoral campaign for the legislative elections on Tuesday, in which Benyamin Netanyahou is playing his survival". The Prime Minister cancelled all Likud events scheduled for Friday. BFMTV also notes the position of Itamar Ben Gvir, a figure of the far right, while Sud Ouest notes that the Prime Minister's allies are calling for large-scale retaliation against the territory and its leaders.

French headlines put the episode back into the context of the West Bank, occupied since 1967, where tension is rising. Sud Ouest recalls that colonization, illegal under international law, has increased significantly under this government. HuffPost France mentions the aggression, on October 16 and 17, of American photographer Heidi Levine and French mayor Bernard Baudoux by Israeli settlers, which gives a national resonance to the case. The same media outlet specifies that the term "terrorist" is generally used by Israeli authorities to refer to any Palestinian assailant.

The humanitarian and diplomatic angle remains secondary: the displacement of Palestinian inhabitants is mentioned as a consequence of the operation, but the dominant reading remains that of a Prime Minister who, four days before the vote, takes on the role of war leader.