Eurasia Press & News
Tulkarem, occupied West Bank – Since Israel officially waged Operation Iron Wall on 21 January, nearly 100 Palestinians have been killed and more than 45,000 forcibly displaced in the West Bank, mostly from the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps.
At least 16,000 of those displaced were expelled from their homes in the Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps between 30 January and 20 February, with Israeli forces expanding its mass expulsion operation to Tulkarem city and homes located on the outskirts of the camps.
As of May, that number has risen to more than 25,000 displaced Palestinians in Tulkarem.
In Jenin, more than 20,000 Palestinians have been displaced from the city’s refugee camp, effectively emptying it of its residents, the overwhelming majority of whom are refugees expelled from their homes in Haifa during the large-scale terror attacks by Haganah, Irgun, and Palmach militias in 1948.
For more than 100 days, Palestinians have been forcibly expelled from their homes, leaving them without shelter and with few personal belongings. Many of those displaced fled their homes with only the clothes on their backs, their ID cards, and their phones.
While the Israeli army claims to be conducting the operations under the pretext of targeting Palestinian “terrorists”, Israeli Minister of Defence Israel Katz, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have made public statements vowing to remain in the camps until the end of the year.
In March, meanwhile, former minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, pushed for the official revocation of the Oslo, Hebron, and Wye River accords, paving the way for de jure annexation of the West Bank.
Destroying Palestinian refugee camps
In less than five months, the Israeli army has either partially or entirely destroyed thousands of homes in Tulkarem. After the near-total emptying of Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps, by April, the army began displacing Palestinians in the northern area of Tulkarem city, displacing at least 800 Palestinians within the first two weeks.
This month, the Israeli army officially began escalating campaigns of demolition in Tulkarem’s refugee camps, effectively ensuring that the displaced families have nothing and nowhere to return to.
“It’s painful to see this sight, but this is what Israel is trying to do, it’s trying to not only displace us once again, but to destroy the entire landscape of the camps which are the spine of the Palestinian cause,” resident Mahmoud Sabbagh told The New Arab, while sitting on the rubble of his shop just outside Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem.
Israel’s focus on refugee camps is neither accidental nor new, but rather part of a larger and more systematic campaign of depopulating the West Bank in a similar fashion to Operation Focus in 1967.
“Israel is doing what they did in 1948 and 1967,” Sabbagh says, as groups of families holding plastic bags of whatever belongings they can carry pass by.
Every few weeks, for just a matter of hours, the Israeli army has allowed the entry of families to gather whatever belongings they can carry before the bombing of their homes.
Often, it is families carrying essentials, such as cooking utensils, clothes, a laptop, or blankets. Most of the time, families have found their homes raided and destroyed from the inside, with little to be salvaged.
At times, parents have only managed to grab a toy or two for their young children – the last surviving memory of what used to be their homes. For the most part, Palestinians leave the camp heartbroken and in tears at the sight of the mass destruction.
“You know something? The camp is beautiful despite all the destruction you see around you,” Sabbagh said with a smile. “You might think it’s strange that I say that. But do you know why the camp is still beautiful?”
Taking a deep breath, he said, “it’s beautiful because of us. The people of the camp. Israel can destroy everything, but no matter what, we hold on to life together”.
However, displaced with no support, and with no signs of Israel’s rampage ending soon, families are struggling to hold on to their lives in Tulkarem. While thousands struggle to secure shelter, continue their education, or access medical care, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has shown little interest in supporting Palestinian families.
The governor of Tulkarem, Maj. Gen. Abdullah Kmeil, declared that a couple of hundred trailers would be distributed for the displaced. However, that’s nowhere near enough for the 25,000 people who are now homeless.
Nowhere to go, no one to help
“I went into the family home which is scheduled to be demolished [today], and what I took was these two photographs of my children, because it’s the most important thing for me,” Umm Raed Hameidi said as she walked out of Nour Shams refugee camp in the first week of May.
In the heat of the sun, she tried to remain resilient, but the pains of loss continued to haunt her. “I lost six people from my family [killed by the Israeli army], including my sister Nisreen Dumeiri killed in Tulkarem refugee camp while she was in her home”.
For Palestinians in Tulkarem and Jenin, the loss is not limited to their displacement and the destruction of their homes, but to the devastation they have experienced in the last four years, beginning with Operation Break the Wave in the Spring of 2022 up to the ongoing Operation Iron Wall.
Nearly half of all Palestinians killed in the West Bank since 2022 and until May of this year were killed in Tulkarem and Jenin, including children and minors. Furthermore, while the Israeli army claims to be killing terrorists, the overwhelming majority of those killed were unarmed civilians killed in their homes.
Palestinians in refugee camps in the northern West Bank have also become targets of Israeli airstrikes, in what has become a common practice of extrajudicial executions by the Israeli army.
Yet in addition to these pains of loss, and chronic exposure to military violence and state-sponsored settler violence, Palestinians are now navigating these dangers without shelter.
“Where do we go now? Tell me? Where do we go?” Abedelrahim Alajneh, 62, cries. Standing outside the governor’s office in Tulkarem, Alajneh was searching for shelter for his family.
For weeks, he has been sleeping at a local mosque in Tulkarem, while his wife and 16-year-old son are staying with relatives in a nearby town.
Children have been out of school for months, and families are struggling to afford the basics like medicine and access to medical care.
Israel’s military operations are not merely displacement campaigns and the demolition of homes. The destruction of roads and the siege of hospitals also deny life-saving medical care to the most vulnerable patients.
The governorate of Tulkarem is one of the most impoverished districts in the West Bank. With little to near non-existent support from the Palestinian Authority, civilians are left to fend for themselves with no real tools or referral systems in place.
“I am unable to even afford medicine for myself,” Alajneh tells TNA, in tears. Suffering from diabetes and heart failure, Alajneh has appealed to the governor’s office and other organisations for support but has not yet received any.
With the West Bank on military lockdown, not only have Israeli military raids become common across all districts, including Ramallah – the de facto headquarters of the PA – but settler violence and the expansion of illegal settlements and outposts have also skyrocketed at alarming rates.
While some analysts allude to Gaza to explain what is currently happening in the West Bank – dubbing it the ‘Gaza-fication’ of the West Bank – what Israel is doing today has been done before.
In 1967, during Israel’s Operation Focus, one of the primary tactics was not merely the destruction of Palestinian infrastructure, but also cutting off the means of communication.
Like today, this included the intentional destruction of roads to obstruct access to different cities and towns, the razing of homes and livelihoods, designating areas as closed military zones, and psychological warfare.
The point was not merely to push Palestinians into a state of chaos and uncertainty, but to effectively deny Palestinians any possibility of accessing and supporting each other.
“We are losing the homes we have built our memories in, the homes we grew up in,” Umm Raed Hameidi said. “All we have is God, and may we be able to hold patience with our faith.”
