On January 12, 2026, an Israeli police convoy drove into Shu‘fat refugee camp in East Jerusalem. A police loudspeaker blared as officers raided the camp: “Residents of the Shu‘fat refugee camp, this is Captain Hilal. We have come to visit you. Whoever wants to meet me should come to me. Whoever wags his tail, we will cut it off.”1

Israeli police arrested 32 Palestinian residents, confiscated weapons, ammunition, drugs, vehicles, packs of smuggled cigarettes, and 13,000 unstamped eggs. They marked the end of their mission with a photo op in the camp square, unveiling an Israeli flag as they posed in front of their armored trucks.2

The raid marked the start of what Israeli police dubbed Operation “Capital Shield,” a military campaign claiming to curb crime and terror and “strengthen sovereignty.”3

Launched under newly appointed Jerusalem District Police Commander Avshalom Peled, the campaign targets the area surrounding northern Jerusalem and the Palestinian neighborhoods adjacent to the Separation Wall there, both inside and outside the wall. To date, in addition to Shu‘fat refugee camp, the Qalandiya refugee camp, Qalandiya village, Kufr ‘Aqab, Hizma, Ras al-Amud, and Jabal Mukabbir have all been affected.

Thus far, the operation has proceeded in three phases: the first began on December 23, 2025, targeting areas beyond the wall, namely, Kufr ‘Aqab and Qalandiya refugee camp.4

The second began on January 12, 2026, targeting Shu’fat refugee camp and lasting several days, before demolition of the UNRWA headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah on January 20, 2026 (see Escalating Israeli Attacks against UNRWA Threaten Its Survival).5

The third phase followed immediately on January 26, 2026, in the Jerusalem Airport neighborhood inside the wall, and at Kufr ‘Aqab and Hizma outside it. Over just two days, more than 40 buildings were demolished in the vicinity of the airport, and more than 70 properties in total across the three areas north of Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate.6 In Hizma, Palestinian advocacy group The Good Shepherd Collective reported that the Israeli army issued 11 demolition orders for seven homes and four structures in one day alone when they stormed and besieged the town on February 3, 2026.7

Israeli forces then even extended their operation northward into the West Bank to Ramallah, where on March 23, 2026, they raided a printing press in the city and arrested staff, claiming the shop produces incitement materials.8 As is common in Israeli police raids (see Selling Books Is Now a Crime in Jerusalem), authorities often broadly label material as inciteful, even for just displaying the Palestinian flag.

The ongoing Capital Shield campaign has resulted in the arrest of over 120 Palestinians9 and the demolition of more than 70 structures in Kufr ‘Aqab and Qalandiya in order to make way for the newly approved, forthcoming Atarot settlement of over 9,000 units, to be located atop the abandoned Jerusalem Airport between the Palestinian urban neighborhoods of Kufr ‘Aqab and Beit Hanina.10

Jerusalem affairs researcher Ziad Ibhais explains that for Israel, the aim is “the final separation of Hizma from Jerusalem, and pushing it towards becoming an isolated countryside that does not connect with an urban center.”11 Indeed, Israeli police say Operation Capital Shield is about cementing Israeli sovereignty, and by doing so, isolating Palestinian areas from each other and from Jerusalem while ending the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Ibhais wrote:

Israeli police even allude to their objectives in the name of the operation itself, Ibhais explained. “This is an operation that wants to make the Jerusalem border an international border, wants to impose on Palestinians that you cannot just think that it’s easy to cross the border . . . this is the main idea to make what is supposed to be municipal borders international borders,” Ibhais told Jerusalem Story.13 “This is why it is called the ‘shield.’”

Jerusalem’s northern and northeastern Palestinian neighborhoods, specifically those located beyond the Separation Wall, are strategically important to Operation Capital Shield.

“They are seen as potential Palestinian urban extensions beyond direct Israeli control,” Marouf al-Rifai, spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Governorate, told Jerusalem Story.14 “Targeting these areas therefore aims to consolidate control over Jerusalem’s northern entrances and prevent cohesive Palestinian geographic and demographic continuity” Between Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestinian West Bank.

Kufr ‘Aqab’s location is particularly noteworthy, sandwiched as it is between the Qalandiya checkpoint and Ramallah.

“One of the objectives of Israel is to strictly end the connection between Jerusalem and Ramallah,” Ibhais said. “Had there been no occupation, Ramallah and Jerusalem would be one city today.” Building the wall in a way that separates Kufr ‘Aqab from the rest of Jerusalem, despite its being within the city’s municipal borders, is part of that strategy.

“Israelis want to make sure that the interconnection will never happen,” Ibhais told Jerusalem Story. “And this is why when they built the wall, they put Kufr ‘Aqab to the north of it, to say that Kufr ‘Aqab has become a part of Ramallah. It’s no more part of Jerusalem, although it’s still, from the planning view or legally, part of Jerusalem” (see The Ghettoization of Kufr ‘Aqab).

Therefore, placing the Atarot settlement where the shuttered Jerusalem Airport stands—just south of Kufr ‘Aqab and to the northeast of Qalandiya—solidifies Kufr ‘Aqab’s isolation from Jerusalem. “Separating Kufr ‘Aqab and the Qalandiya refugee camp from Jerusalem with industrial, residential, and security layers, and not just with the wall” is part of the plan, Ibhais said.15

Experts like Ibhais and the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights say Capital Shield is part of implementing Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s 2017 Decisive Plan, published in the Hebrew journal HaShiloach, which outlines the method for achieving full Israeli sovereignty from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.16 To do so, the question of Palestine is to be forcibly resolved through either the expulsion of Palestinians or their complete submission, and the extinguishment of Palestinian resistance and any aspiration for statehood.

BADIL writes:

Al-Rifai explained further that Operation Capital Shield is grounded in Israel’s policy of creeping, rather than formal, annexation of the West Bank.

“‘Capital Shield’ can be seen as a tool to reinforce security control as a precursor to political control, a means of creating a coercive environment that pressures Palestinians to leave,” al-Rifai said. “‘Capital Shield’ is not a temporary measure, but part of a systematic policy to reshape the city politically and geographically.”

Capital Shield can also be understood in the context of the Israeli vision of a “Greater Jerusalem” (see Israel’s Vision of a Greater [Jewish] Jerusalem). This idea revolves around Israel’s exploitation of Jerusalem’s ambiguous municipal boundaries in order to expand its territorial control. By constructing bypass roads linking West Jerusalem to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, while disconnecting Palestinian areas from each other and isolating them, Israel is forming a cohesive, greatly expanded Jewish Jerusalem and simultaneously enclaving and ghettoizing the Palestinian population, creating conditions where life becomes unsustainable and the population opts to leave.

This is already happening, not just with Operation Capital Shield but also in Israeli settlement plans like the settler-only highways Road 45 (see Road 45, a New Israeli Settler-Only Road, Will Now Traverse Qalandiya, Further Dispossessing Palestinians) and Highway 4370 (see Israel Set to Begin Construction of “Apartheid Road,” Cutting Palestinians Off from Central West Bank), the construction of the new Adam West settlement, which will expand Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries (see In Move Tantamount to Annexation, Israel to Expand Jerusalem’s Municipal Boundaries Northward), and the completion of the E1 settlement bloc that would split the West Bank in two (see Israel Accelerates Plans to Build E1, Entailing Mass Displacement of Bedouin Communities).

Under the so-called Greater Jerusalem plan, the city’s limits will extend from Giv’at Ze’ev in the north and Ma‘ale Adumim in the east to Gush Etzion in the south. So, while Capital Shield is currently focused on the northern end of Jerusalem, Ibhais believes it will eventually reach the south as well, furthering the impossibility of Palestinian national contiguity.

“There is another connection in the south between Jerusalem and Beit Jala and Bethlehem. It is less important and easier to achieve,” Ibhais began. “If Capital Shield succeeds in the north, I think the southern part of it will follow to make sure that this part of the city also will not be connected with Bethlehem or Beit Jala.”

Capital Shield is therefore not just another level of security but a means of establishing more facts on the ground. Israel “wants to enforce a final solution,” Ibhais said. “And this final solution would turn Jerusalem from an Arab city into a Hebrew city forever.”