Netanyahu vows major West Bank offensive after two soldiers killed in Hebron

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed a West Bank military operation "of a scale not seen since the Six-Day War" after two Israeli soldiers were killed in Hebron, days before the 27 October election. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is urging the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority, while Defence Minister Israel Katz has described a plan modelled on Gaza and Lebanon. The land and Jerusalem region at the centre of this confrontation is where Scripture places the final gathering of nations (Zechariah 12:2–3), though this is a regional escalation, not itself the Armageddon gathering.