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In a statement shared with Middle East Eye on Saturday evening, Hebron’s Mayor Yousef Jaabari confirmed that Israeli military forces have sealed every entry and exit point to the occupied West Bank city, and carried out forced evictions displacing roughly 2,200 Palestinian residents from their homes in surrounding neighbourhoods.
Jaabari described the current situation in Hebron as a full-blown disaster zone, noting that the total closure prevents any person or supply from moving in or out of the densely populated area. He framed the sweeping restrictions as a deliberate act of collective punishment imposed by Israeli authorities, triggered by a fatal shooting incident on Friday.
Earlier that day, two suspected Palestinian assailants opened fire on Israeli military personnel positioned at the Farsh al-Hawa checkpoint, located in the northern reaches of Hebron, resulting in the deaths of two Israeli soldiers and non-fatal injuries to three additional troops.
As the largest urban centre in the West Bank, Hebron is home to approximately 320,000 permanent residents, and serves as the administrative hub for the broader Hebron Governorate, which counts more than one million total inhabitants, per data shared by Jaabari.
The mass forced evictions targeted the neighbourhoods of Deir Bahala, al-Jalda and adjacent residential zones, covering a land area of roughly 330 dunams that holds more than 490 separate housing units. Local residents who spoke to Middle East Eye reported that Israeli soldiers gave affected families only five minutes to gather their belongings and vacate their properties, leaving no time to arrange for the transport of personal possessions. Footage circulated on social media platforms showed convoys of Palestinian truck drivers coordinating to evacuate stock and raw materials from local factories, acting in a last-minute bid to save supplies before Israeli forces move ahead with planned demolitions of the structures.
Jaabari added that Hebron municipal teams have intervened rapidly to arrange temporary shelter for all displaced residents, with the local government formally declaring a city-wide state of emergency to coordinate relief efforts and track every evolving detail of the crisis. The municipality has also launched a dedicated 24/7 crisis hotline for displaced families and affected residents to request urgent support, food, shelter or medical assistance.
Beyond the city-wide closure and mass evictions, Israeli forces also moved to lock down the Ibrahimi Mosque, a protected UNESCO-endangered Palestinian World Heritage Site, expelling all its on-site staff and custodians, according to official statements from the Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs. Jaabari confirmed that congregational prayers are no longer being held at the ancient religious site, and Israeli forces have issued a formal ban on the traditional Islamic call to prayer being broadcast from its premises.
The Ibrahimi Mosque stands as one of the oldest and most revered shared holy sites across Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and has been administered exclusively by Palestinian religious authorities and used as a mosque for more than 1,400 consecutive years. Over recent months, Israeli authorities have moved to tighten their grip on the site, rolling out a series of escalating restrictions including periodic bans on Muslim worshippers accessing the space, repeated limits on the call to prayer, and policies that enable increasing incursions by Israeli settlers into the mosque grounds.
Jaabari went on to note that the timing of the sweeping crackdown appears highly suspicious, accusing far-right factions within the current Israeli government of leveraging the crisis in Hebron, including the restrictions on the Ibrahimi Mosque and the displacement of local Palestinian residents, as free, high-visibility electoral publicity for hardline ministers competing in upcoming national Israeli elections.

In a widely viewed Friday interview published on social media platform X with prominent commentator Mario Nawfal, Tom Barrack, the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and designated special envoy for Syria, laid out a series of unvarnished observations about simmering tensions across southern Syria’s Sweida province, regional alliances, and the long-term trajectory of Israeli-Syrian relations.

Contrary to widespread public speculation that U.S. officials were prioritizing concerns over Israeli military activity in southern Syria, Barrack shifted focus to an unnamed high-profile Druze sheikh operating in the Sweida region, whom he accused of leveraging widespread public perceptions of Israeli military backing and implicit U.S. support to target and persecute fellow members of the Druze religious community. “Let me be clear: Israel is not the source of my primary concern here,” Barrack stated during the discussion. “The real risk comes from one specific Druze leader who is exploiting the widespread belief that he has both Israeli and American backing to carry out abuses against his own community members.” Barrack explicitly clarified that any claims of formal U.S. support for this unilaterally acting leader were “absolutely wrong”, pushing back against circulating rumors that Washington was backing separatist activity in the region.

While Barrack declined to name the sheikh during the public remarks, the timing and context of his comments align directly with rising public tensions surrounding Hikmat al-Hijri, the influential Druze spiritual leader based in Sweida who has openly rejected the authority of the Damascus-based Syrian government, publicly called for Israeli military support, and formally advocated for full regional independence from Syrian national governance. Earlier this month, supporters of al-Hijri sparked widespread controversy by raising Israeli national flags during a Sweida rally held to mark the third anniversary of the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel. In May 2026, al-Hijri publicly declared that his community’s push for self-determination was irreversible, outlining a formal policy goal of establishing a fully independent Jabal Bashan administration completely separate from Damascus’s jurisdiction.

Barrack went on to level additional allegations about the local economy in Sweida and neighboring Daraa, claiming the contiguous region operates as the global epicenter for captagon production, an illicit amphetamine whose trade generates massive unregulated revenue that local armed Druze factions use to fund weapons purchases. “The corridor running from Sweida to Daraa is effectively the world’s captagon manufacturing hub,” Barrack explained. “That is the core of its local economy right now: producing and selling this illegal drug, which is functionally similar to the mass production of methamphetamines, and the profits from that trade are what arm local Druze armed groups.”

These allegations drew an immediate, fiery rebuke from the al-Hijri-affiliated Bashan Administration, which published a formal response on Facebook dismissing Barrack’s claims as deliberate, misleading fabrications. “The Bashan Administration expresses profound anger and unreserved condemnation of the baseless falsehoods and irresponsible accusations Special Envoy Tom Barrack has made in his recent public comments,” the statement read. “We categorically reject his reckless attempt to paint Jabal Bashan as a captagon production center. It is a well-documented public fact that our community has stood on the front lines fighting smuggling networks for years, losing some of our most promising young men in the effort to stamp out this harmful illicit trade entirely.”

Barrack also offered nuanced context for longstanding Israeli ties to Druze populations across the region, noting that the relationship extended far beyond cynical political interference. He highlighted that Druze communities in the Golan Heights and along the shared Israeli-Syrian border have a decades-long history of standing as formal allies to Israeli forces, with generations of community members serving alongside IDF troops and paying a heavy personal price for that alliance. Israeli authorities have repeatedly framed their periodic military interventions in southern Syria as protective measures for local Druze populations, including a July 2025 strike that targeted Syrian government forces during active fighting in Sweida.

The U.S. envoy went on to note that the current Syrian government under President Ahmed al-Sharaa has exercised notable restraint in responding to repeated Israeli cross-border incursions, warning that a single retaliatory strike by Damascus could rapidly spiral into a large-scale regional conflict. “Syria has been extremely cautious, because it understands that any aggressive response to these incursions will ignite a fire that no one will be able to contain,” Barrack explained. “Damascus has exercised remarkable patience while Israel maintains its self-declared buffer zone across the border, even as local Druze actors conduct activities that undermine Syrian national authority.”

Looking ahead to long-term regional diplomacy, Barrack expressed cautious optimism that Israel and Syria would eventually reach a formal mutual understanding, even amid ongoing deep mistrust and persistent border tensions. He noted that al-Sharaa has repeatedly communicated that he has no interest in initiating a confrontation with Israel, and that the two sides have already completed five formal rounds of border and boundary negotiations, launching the process with initial talks in Paris back in May 2024. “We came very close to reaching a full agreement in earlier rounds, and I am confident we will get there again,” Barrack added. He acknowledged that Israeli officials remain wary of Syria’s new leadership due to al-Sharaa’s past background as a fighter with the al-Nusra Front, as well as the presence of unvetted foreign fighters deployed in Syrian army units posted near the Israeli border, leaving Israeli security teams unconvinced that Syria’s verbal assurances of non-aggression are sufficiently credible to guarantee long-term border stability.

In mid-September, marine biologist Kim Hyun-woo, a leading South Korean shark expert employed by the National Institute of Fisheries Science, received an urgent call from the coastguard mid-way through a return trip from a mackerel shoal monitoring mission. The alert notified him that a large, unidentifiable shark had been spotted trapped in a shallow, concrete-lined canal in Busan, a bustling southeastern port city that ranks as home to the world’s seventh-busiest shipping hub. While South Korean waters are no stranger to shark sightings, a specimen of this size trapped in a manmade waterway steps from a major commercial port was an unprecedented event.
As curious onlookers rapidly gathered along the waterfront, Kim’s team first moved to verify the shark’s species to assess potential public safety risks. Fears of a dangerous great white shark (made infamous by the 1975 thriller *Jaws*) were soon allayed: the stranded animal was a female dusky shark, a species linked to only two recorded fatal human attacks globally. Even so, the team remained on high alert for the risk of excited spectators accidentally falling or leaping into the canal, making a safe return to open water the top priority for the operation.
Initial rescue attempts relied on standard beach safety tools: a small coastguard vessel deployed electrical deterrent devices, which emit low-level currents that sharks naturally avoid. After five hours of failed efforts, however, officials conceded the large, fast-swimming dusky shark was unaffected by the mild current. Kim then pivoted to a passive waiting strategy, hoping the animal would instinctively navigate back to the adjacent harbor on its own — a plan that never came to fruition.
Word of the stranded shark spread like wildfire across Busan. Local authorities issued a city-wide emergency SMS alert urging residents to steer clear of the canal for their own safety, but the message had the unintended effect of turning the previously underused waterfront park into a crowded tourist hotspot. Locals affectionately named the shark Bukangi, derived from the Korean term for the nearby North Port, and the creature quickly became a cultural phenomenon: local businesses rushed to trademark the name, selling out of Bukangi-themed keychains, plush toys, and t-shirts online within days. The Busan municipal government joined the frenzy, launching 24/7 livestreams of the shark’s movements and even naming Bukangi an unofficial city mascot, hanging a banner at the canal entrance that invited visitors to sign a petition urging national government funding for a new 30,000-seat baseball stadium to be built adjacent to the waterway in the shark’s name.
Over the weeks that followed, the canal waterfront developed its own informal community rules: children were given priority access to the front viewing spots, and anyone who spotted Bukangi was required to point her out to new arrivals. Self-appointed volunteer stewards even patrolled the banks after dark to ensure no visitors shone bright torches or laser pointers that could disorient the shark. By the end of the stranding period, more than 1.6 million people had traveled to the canal to catch a glimpse of the animal, with Busan’s mayor noting the viral media attention generated for the port was worth more than any multi-billion-dollar marketing campaign could ever achieve. Many visitors described Bukangi as an unexpected unifying force for the city, bringing diverse communities together in shared concern and joy.
As the weeks passed, however, the shark’s health began to decline: experts observed she had stopped feeding for multiple consecutive days, and fresh, bloody abrasions had appeared on her snout and pectoral fins from repeated collisions with the canal’s concrete walls. Prominent marine biology professor Choi Yoon warned local media of a potentially critical injury near the shark’s eye, raising urgent alarms about her long-term survival if she remained in the narrow, manmade waterway. Kim’s team revisited a 2004 Massachusetts rescue operation that used high-powered water jets to herd a stranded great white shark out of a shallow pond, but the tactic failed to move Bukangi, who repeatedly circled back toward the canal. A subsequent attempt to block the canal mouth with a wide net also collapsed, as the shark swam around the barrier and returned to the enclosed water within hours. Kim later hypothesized the animal may have lost her way after damaging the electromagnetic sensory pores on her snout (the organ sharks rely on for navigation), or had been disoriented by the constant loud noise from passing cargo vessels in the busy port. South Korea’s Oceans Ministry added that the stranding may be a symptom of rising ocean temperatures: the government recorded 50 large shark sightings off the country’s east coast in the first half of the year alone, four times the total recorded in the same period the previous year, as predators follow warming waters and dense shoals of prey fish northward.
The declining health of the shark split public opinion sharply. A faction of Bukangi’s growing fanbase staged peaceful protests along the canal banks, holding signs that read “Leave Bukangi Alone” and “Protect Bukangi’s Right to Self-Determination”, arguing the animal should be allowed to remain in the canal undisturbed. One 40-year-old protester described the shark as a beloved “source of hope and joy” for the city, and said officials had no right to mercilessly evict her. Other locals, however, argued that prioritizing the animal’s long-term survival was more important than the novelty of her presence, noting the canal was a completely unsuitable human-made habitat that would become unlivable as autumn temperatures dropped and sharks’ natural migratory instincts pushed them far south to warmer waters.
As public scrutiny intensified, the Oceans Ministry formally took control of the rescue operation, mobilizing a 40-person team including professional divers from Busan’s public aquarium, a specialized marine vet, and on-site emergency medical support to respond to any potential attacks from the stressed animal. Rescuers first installed two layered nets across the canal mouth to guide Bukangi outward, but the shark slipped under the outer barrier overnight and became trapped in the narrow gap between the two nets. After removing the outer layer, rescuers successfully herded the animal steadily toward open, deep harbor water. Though Bukangi made several brief, tentative attempts to circle back toward the canal entrance, she eventually swam out into the open sea, bringing the weeks-long rescue operation to a close.
No confirmed sightings of Bukangi have been reported in the days following her release, a development marine experts describe as a very positive sign that she is readjusting to life in deep, open waters. Professor Choi notes the shark is unlikely to have swum far from the Busan coast, and may reappear in local waters in the coming week as she recovers from her injuries. For now, the city of Busan and millions of well-wishers across South Korea are waiting patiently, holding their breath and hoping the beloved viral shark will safely find her way back to her natural ocean home.