For the first time since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, the term “expulsion” has returned to the forefront of discussions, with over 40,000 refugees from camps in the northern West Bank displaced from their homes within just a few weeks.
This is a direct result of ‘Operation Iron Wall‘ launched on 21 January, which has magnified fears that Israel is attempting to re-engineer the West Bank geographically, demographically and politically – the initial stage of which is being implemented through rendering refugee camps uninhabitable.
Around 49 Palestinians have been killed and around 200 arrested since the operation began late last month.
Israel’s assault on the West Bank
Four refugee camps – Jenin, Nur Shams, Tulkarm and Faraa – have been almost fully emptied, with thousands of refugees forced to evacuate after Israeli forces destroyed hundreds of buildings and levelled much of their infrastructure.
Palestinian political analysts say Israel’s war on Palestinian refugees began following Hamas’s attack in October last year, and that the current campaign should be viewed as a political operation rather than having a military or security-related agenda.
Walid Habbas, a researcher at the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies (MADAR), told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister edition, that since October 2023 Israeli officials have repeatedly said that “Israel is fighting a multi-front war, and while the most important front is Gaza, another front is the West Bank”.
He added that Israel Katz, who was Israel’s foreign minister at the time but is currently defence minister, had doubled down on this, saying Israel was “entering an all-out war” in the West Bank.
“A major shift has occurred in Israel regarding everything relating to the camps and the refugees,” Habbas explained. He says since the war on Gaza began, Israelis have been calling for a review of the fact that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has not “ended” the refugee issue despite having existed for 30 years and “despite all the money it’s been given”.
The PA’s failure to address the issue and dismantle the camps in the West Bank had ensured the Palestinian refugee question remained a live issue. “Israel’s problem with the Gaza Strip isn’t limited to Hamas alone, but involves the refugees because the vast majority of Gaza’s inhabitants are refugees,” Habbas explained.
“It’s in this light that we should understand Israel’s behaviour in the West Bank, its war on UNRWA, its expulsion of Gaza’s inhabitants, and now its total obliteration of the camps.”Â
One of Israel’s main goals is to end UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) from operating altogether and to resettle refugees in other places. UNRWA is regarded as a repository of collective Palestinian memory and the official body which has safeguarded the existence of the Palestinian refugee issue for decades.
Habbas says Israel’s desire to destroy the camps is unrelated to the presence of armed groups. Instead, it aims to destroy “the refugee camp” for what it embodies – a space for refugees which implicitly symbolises the concept of return.
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According to a statement by UNRWA on 10 February, Israel’s “repeated and destructive operations have rendered the northern refugee camps uninhabitable, trapping residents in cyclical displacement. In 2024, more than 60 per cent of displacement was a result of Israeli Forces operations, absent any judicial orders”.
UNRWA asserted that the forced displacement in the West Bank resulted from an increasingly “coercive environment” involving “airstrikes, armoured bulldozers, controlled detonations, and advanced weaponry,” all of which constituted a military approach “inconsistent with the law enforcement context of the occupied West Bank”.
The UN body also highlighted that since 30 January it had had no contact with Israeli authorities due to Israel’s new law banning the organisation, which hampered its ability to raise concerns about civilian suffering and humanitarian needs.
Re-engineering the camps
Observers point out that Israel’s current assault against the camps differs from past operations, like “Operation Defensive Shield” (2002), “Break the Wave” (2022), “Home and Garden” (2023) and “Summer Camps” (2024).
In those operations, Israel carried out partial destruction of the camps, whereas today it appears to be aiming at destroying them so they’re uninhabitable.
Expert in Israeli affairs Suleiman Basharat said that while “until now, the clearest pictures are those coming out of Jenin Camp, the same thing is underway in Nur Shams, Tulkarm and Faraa camps, where [Israel] is systematically demolishing houses and constructing roads in their place, severing the camp from one end to the other in multiple directions”.
Basharat explained that “Israel is replicating what it did in Gaza’s refugee camps, but in a less bloody manner, while maintaining the same goal through coercing people to leave”.
He explained that this is one aspect of “re-engineering ‘the human’ – the camps represent a political and symbolic identity for the refugee, and [Israel is attempting] to strip him of this identity”.
Shami al-Shami, a former Fatah representative of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and a Jenin Camp resident, said Israel had “demolished entire residential blocks in Jenin camp […] and opened wide roads in their place”.
“We are talking about the total transformation of the defining features of the camp, and of roads carved out from the rubble of houses – all that remains is to pave them and a new geographical reality will have been created in the camp,” al-Shami said.
While Palestinians and political analysts are voicing fears over what comes next, criticisms are also being directed at the Palestinian Authority for failing to take any action against what is happening.
Journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq believes the PA “removed legal and national protection from the camps through its security campaign against Jenin camp, and its attack on the other camps, along with its accompanying local and international media campaign, [insinuating] these camps contained IS-like and Iranian militias and outlaws” which were the same pretexts used by the Israeli army in its assault.
“Yesterday the Gaza Strip was singled out, and today, Israel is singling out the camps in the northern West Bank, which the PA legitimised yesterday, and is silent about today.”
Israel will finish what it’s started in the rest of the West Bank, the journalist warns.
“What the PA did during its operation in Jenin camp which lasted 52 days, as well as hunting down resistance fighters in other camps and killing of some of them, like in Tulkarm’s camps, and stopping journalists covering these events, has led us to a point where we are seeing no Palestinian reaction to the current Israeli operation happening in the northern West Bank – from the rest of the West Bank,” he said.
“Even until now the PA has not addressed [what’s happening in] these camps on a national level, not in the media, nor politically.”
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The PA paved the way for Israel
Jamal Zubeidi, a leading figure in Jenin camp, explained that the PA seemed to have paved the way for Israel to carry out its wrecking operations, “after treating the camp like an ‘Iranian-ISIS outpost'”.
Zubeidi added: “The camp isn’t anyone’s outpost; those being pursued are the patriotic, resistance fighting sons of the camp […] and we know them, and we know their factional affiliations”.
Moreover, he says, “the PA is still participating in the military operation against Jenin camp as much as [Israel] is”. He says the continuing campaign of arrests of “young resistance fighters” who Israel previously imprisoned indicated that the PA’s security apparatus was directly coordinating with the Israeli occupation.
“I don’t know how far the PA wants to go – it’s as though it’s not learned [yet] from the behaviour of the [Israeli] occupation, though it’s well-known it has no respect for the PA, despite what the PA does for it.”
This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition. To read the original article click here.
Translated by Rose Chacko Â
This article is taken from our Arabic sister publication, Al-Araby Al Jadeed and mirrors the source’s original editorial guidelines and reporting policies. Any requests for correction or comment will be forwarded to the original authors and editors.
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