Every Border Police Battalion in the West Bank Put on Alert

Israel's Border Police placed all of its units in the West Bank on extended operational readiness for the weekend following an incident that morning at Havat Gilad, according to a statement issued by the force on 24 July 2026. The statement said the commander of the Border Police in Judea and Samaria - the name Israel uses for the West Bank - Superintendent Nisso Guetta, held a situation assessment with his forces at the close of the funeral of the security coordinator of Havat Gilad, which took place in the area of the outpost.

Following the incident, the statement said, the Border Police commander and Israeli army commanders in the Judea and Samaria Division ordered extended readiness across the division's sector for the coming weekend, concentrated on two efforts: preventing friction incidents and public disturbances, and offensive counter-terrorism operations and the arrest of wanted individuals. All Border Police battalions in the area, its territorial units and its special units would take part, the statement said, naming the undercover unit, the explosives unit, the Matilan unit and the investigations and intelligence office. Border Police officers would continue to work alongside the army, the Israel Police and the General Security Service - the Shin Bet, Israel's internal intelligence agency - to thwart attacks and keep order in the area.

What Havat Gilad is

Havat Gilad, sometimes rendered in English as Gilad Farm, sits in the northern West Bank about a kilometre from the settlement of Kedumim, in the ring of Israeli communities around the Palestinian city of Nablus. It was set up in 2002 as an unauthorised outpost and named for Gilad Zar, a regional council security officer killed in 2001. Israeli authorities dismantled it several times in its early years before granting it official status in February 2018.

What a settlement security coordinator does

The post held by the man whose funeral is described in the statement is a formal one. A 2025 paper by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism describes the security coordinator, known in Hebrew as the ravshatz, as an official employed by the Defence Ministry who commands a community's rapid response team - a squad of local residents trained to give immediate protection during an infiltration or a mass-casualty incident. As of 7 October 2023 there were some 418 such coordinators supporting roughly 400 teams. The paper records that recruitment criteria were relaxed after that date, the age range widening to take in volunteers between 21 and 64 and the required standard of military experience being lowered.

The force being deployed

The Border Police, known in Hebrew as Magav, is the gendarmerie branch of the Israel Police, not part of the army, though its conscripts are drafted through the ordinary military call-up. The Institute for National Security Studies assessed in 2023 that it fields more than 7,000 serving personnel, about a quarter of the whole Israel Police, and that in the West Bank its units operate under the army's Central Command. Its deployment is heavily weighted towards Jerusalem and the West Bank cities.

The undercover unit named in the statement is Yamas, active since 1991, which operates in plain clothes through three regional divisions covering the West Bank, Jerusalem and the south, carrying out arrests and covert operations. The police did not describe the roles of the explosives unit or the Matilan unit.

The wider caseload

The district's ordinary workload is substantial. Setting out the results of a large enforcement operation in August 2025, JNS carried figures compiled by the volunteer group Rescuers Without Borders and cross-checked against Israeli security-service data, recording 6,343 attacks on Israelis in the West Bank during 2024, among them 179 shootings, 843 petrol-bomb attacks and 526 explosive charges, with 27 Israelis killed and more than 300 wounded.

What the statement did not say

The Border Police did not describe the Havat Gilad incident itself: it gave no account of what happened, who was involved, or whether anyone had been arrested. It did not name the security coordinator whose funeral had just ended, or say how he died. Nor did it say how many officers the readiness order covers, how long it would last, or what "preventing friction incidents" would mean in practice.