The attack came first
On 23 October two gunmen opened fire on IDF soldiers at the Judea Junction. They killed Staff Sergeant Ron Yonatan Roytman, 23, from Ashkelon, a squad commander in the Ari Battalion, and Sergeant Yuval Shai Svilem, 20, from Hod Hasharon. The initial investigation, Israel National News reported, found that the attackers were two 27-year-old Hamas-affiliated residents of Hebron, armed with an M4 rifle and a handgun, who opened fire after they could not reach Highway 35. The gunfight lasted 20 minutes. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said the large quantity of ammunition in their vehicle “was intended to be used in a larger-scale attack,” and that the soldiers’ actions “prevented an even more severe attack.”
The operation was the response
That night the IDF and the Shin Bet, with the Border Police and the Judea Regional Brigade, began a counterterrorism operation in the part of Hebron the attackers came from. The Jerusalem Post reported the joint statement: forces searched for weapons and terror infrastructure, questioned suspects, and set three designated exit points through which residents left after security screening. Israel National News reported that the operation was “targeted and limited to the area from which the terrorists operated.”
That is the “displacement” OCHA describes: residents screened and moved out of a search area while forces looked for the weapons, the accomplices and the network behind the murder of two soldiers, in a cell that the Chief of Staff said was armed for a larger attack. When the search ended, after nine days, the operation ended.
Why this is not collective punishment
The term collective punishment means penalizing people for acts they did not commit. Nobody in Hebron was penalized. The operation was limited to the area the gunmen came from, its aim was to find the people and weapons behind the attack and prevent the next one, and it ended when that work was done. That is what any state does after terrorists kill its soldiers.
OCHA’s post does not name the two soldiers, Hamas, or the ammunition meant for a bigger attack. Remove the attack, and the response to it looks like punishment. That is the only way OCHA’s accusation works.