Israel Is Gazafiying the West Bank and turning these Palestinians into refugees yet again
A Palestinian walks on down a destroyed road in the Jenin refugee camp, February 2025
Gideon Levy writes in Haaretz on 1 March 2025:
Three not particularly young men are crammed into a single room. It has no toilet. The drapes are drawn and it’s crowded, with three iron beds that barely fit inside. In the center is a bowl of dates, typically eaten during periods of mourning. This week, they were mourning the death of the brother of one of the room’s occupants, a man who had succumbed to injuries incurred in the Gaza Strip.
All three have wives and children in Gaza, whom they have not seen since October 7 and may well never see again. Torn from their families, they now live in this small room, on the second floor of a community center that serves local youth. They are laborers from Gaza who were working legally in Israel until October 7. After that, Israel expelled them to the West Bank. Here, in the city of Anabta, they have found a temporary refuge, surviving on handouts.
Not far from the community center is the diwan of the A’mar family – a structure originally designed for family functions such as weddings and days of mourning, but now serving as an improvised refuge. Drapes separate the women’s space from the men’s, and toilets are in the hallway. Here, 26 members of a family that was forcibly expelled from their home in the Nur Shams refugee camp, have found shelter. They do not know if their home has been demolished. The father of the family, who made his living as a driver, lost his car when it was crushed by an armored military vehicle. Now he paces the diwan, angry, outraged, frustrated. He refuses to endure the humiliation of living off donations – of food, clothing, heaters and sometimes money.
Winds of war blow through the northern West Bank. The head of the local council of Anabta says emergency plans are in place to absorb thousands of refugees. Jenin has already been invaded by tanks, and three refugee camps – Jenin, Tul Karm and Nur Shams – have been almost entirely depopulated by army forces.
Minister of Defense Israel Katz boasted this week that 40,000 displaced West Bank residents will not be able to return home for at least a year. Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces has been tearing down infrastructure in the camps, with dozens of homes already reduced to rubble. Displaced people will clearly have nowhere to return to – and the operation has only just begun. It is safe to assume the campaign will expand to include all the refugee camps in the West Bank. The “Gaza-fication” of the West Bank is in full swing. The three northern camps already look like Jabalya, and no one is allowed to enter them.
The road to Tul Karm, which passes through two refugee camps, has been torn apart, rendering it impassable. The Al-Manshiyya neighborhood in the Nur Shams camp has been completely emptied of its 4,000 inhabitants. They are descendants of refugees from the 1948 war, originally from Manshiyya in northern Jaffa, now forced into exile once again – for the second, third and even fourth time.
Gazan refugees living currently in a youth center in Anabta, from left, Ahmed Abu al-Hosna, Zuheir al-Hindi and Imad Moutawek, who had been employed in the kitchen of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school in Haifa, whose name they never knew
Some of them have been forced to make several stops before arriving in Anabta. According to field researcher Abd al-Karim Saadi, of the Israeli B’Tselem human rights organization, only 11 people remain in the Tul Karm camp – all elderly and besieged. Saadi knows who they are but has been unable to reach the camp since the military incursion began.
On January 21, the army invaded the Jenin camp, evicted all its inhabitants and began to destroy homes and infrastructure. On January 27, troops entered the Tul Karm camp. On February 7, they invaded Nur Shams. Since then, the military has maintained a presence in all three camps, while their inhabitants remain displaced and destitute.
Claims by the IDF that inhabitants “left of their own accord” were refuted by all the displaced persons we have spoken to, as well as by aid organizations that are working with them. Time and again, stories emerge of troops bursting into homes and forcing the occupants to flee, without taking anything with them, and of calls over loudspeakers in the streets, demanding that everyone evacuate.
With just the clothes on their backs, tens of thousands have been forced to seek refuge in other communities. These are the new refugees – the West Bank “Gazans” – victims of what may be an irreversible process, especially in light of the total destruction being inflicted on the camps.
Anabta, which is relatively quiet and affluent, is home to 8,500 inhabitants. A few decades ago, I visited there with Israeli-American political cartoonist and journalist Ranan Lurie. Lurie had served as the military governor of Anabta in 1967 and told me that, back then, he was the one who gave the local council head an official letter of surrender to sign, since his town had now fallen under Israeli jurisdiction. Lurie remembered that the man trembled with fear. Later Lurie himself saw buses with Israeli license plates parked out on the road, and realized there was a plan to expel the town’s residents beyond the Jordan River. He went all the way to then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to halt the plan – and succeeded to prevent the evacuation.
Fear of forced population transfer has not left Anabta since 1948, and this week, people were talking about it again. Since that visit with Lurie, I have passed through there dozens of times on my way to Tul Karm. The road is now blocked; the army is everywhere. Last Sunday, soldiers laid barbed wire at all the entrances to Nur Shams, which until now had been blocked by dirt piles.
Soufian Barakat, 54, manages the facility in Anabta – under the auspices of an organization called the Wasel Center For Youth Development – that normally hosts a youth theater group but has now become a haven for refugees from Gaza. Barakat, who was himself imprisoned in Israel for 13 years, has spearheaded volunteer work and collection of donations for the refugees. After October 7, 17 men, most of them laborers, took up residence in the center; nine of them are still there. We went up to the second floor, where the displaced Gazans have been sheltering. It was a heart-wrenching sight.
Ahmed Abu al-Hosna, 55, a father of nine from Jabalya, greeted us; it was his 69-year-old brother who died this week, after being shot and wounded by soldiers in Gaza. He shows us a photo of his brother, whom he hadn’t seen for 18 months, on his cellphone. One bed over is Zuheir al-Hindi, 60, also a father of nine, from Deir al-Balah. He lives here while some 30 displaced persons are crowded into his home, in the central part of Gaza. The youngest occupant of the room, also from Jabalya, is Imad Moutawek, 39, a father of five. These three gentle souls had been working in the kitchen of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school in Haifa, perhaps a yeshiva, whose name they never knew. The Bedouin contractor who employed them still owes them their last paycheck but has vanished; they, for their part, were expelled to a checkpoint in the West Bank and from there, made their way to Anabta.
They occasionally go out to find jobs in the area, mainly farmwork, but are mostly dependent on donations.
Living in the other room on this floor is Mohammed Khader, 38, originally from Beit Lahia in northern Gaza. His wife, Yasmeen, 25, and their four children, the youngest of whom is 5, survived the war; his father-in-law was killed. Khader’s wife and children fled to Khan Yunis and then returned to Beit Lahia after the recent cease-fire took effect, only to find that their home no longer existed. They have been living in a tent on its ruins. Rooming with Khader is Mohammed Abu Lakhia, 52, a father of five from Khan Yunis, also lost his home. His wife and children now live in a tent in Bani Suheila in southern Gaza.
The third occupant of this room, Anas Abu Rabi, 20, left Gaza a few months before the war broke out for medical treatment for his blood disease,at Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem; he has been stranded here since. His family – parents, seven sisters and a brother, originally from Jabalya – have all lost their homes and now live in a tent.
Sitting in his office, the council head of Anabta, Thabet A’mar, explains that with Ramadan starting next week, the stream of donations to the refugees has intensified, especially from Arab Israelis. But he is concerned about the future. He fears the military crackdown will intensify, and with it the flood of refugees arriving in town. There are already emergency plans in place to house newcomers in several public buildings. “We must share our lives with those people,” he says, adding that he is awaiting a decision by the Palestinian Ministry of Education on whether he can turn schools, too, into shelters, as in Gaza. Meanwhile, efforts continue to absorb refugee youngsters into local schools.
On the ground floor of a new apartment building, in a virtually empty apartment with marble floors, live Rukiah Uffi and her family; they recently escaped to Anabta from their home in the Tul Karm camp. She is 65 and once worked as a science and math teacher in Saudi Arabia before returning to the West Bank in 2000.
On January 27, army troops invaded the camp, she says, and soldiers ordered residents to evacuate. They initially relocated to the city of Tul Karm, then to Anabta. Seeing the soldiers preparing for a long stay near their camp, they decided to rent this new apartment, to wait out the crisis.
Uffi lives here with her own daughter and young granddaughter, in addition to her sister and her family – three generations, eight people. They sleep on mattresses on the floor. Volunteers have been bringing them food and helping with their other needs. Uffi’s daughter, Aya, a 31-year-old student, says she suffered a miscarriage after being forced out of their home.
Not far away, in the diwan of the extended A’mar family, Jamal Khalil and his family have taken shelter. “Why am I here,” he asks, irritated. “Why should I live off handouts? Why can’t I be in my home? The people of Anabta are good people, but I cannot live on other people’s money. I’ve worked all my life and never depended on anybody. I’ve had it. I’ve had it. You [Israelis] have already killed all the armed militants in the camp, so why did you send in the tanks? And why are you destroying everything? Are you fighting the walls? The bricks? What did I ever do to you? Why should my children and I suffer? Why did you drive me away from my home? Your target is not the militants. Your goal is to ruin our lives, the lives of the innocents.”
Khalil moved to Anabta with his family immediately after the army invaded Nur Shams. He says some 40 soldiers burst into his home; they were aggressive and violent, shouting and shoving people to get them to leave. The soldiers evicted 26 of his relatives, who were not allowed to take anything with them. His daughter-in-law could not even grab a box of powdered milk for his 9-month-old grandson. Two days after their expulsion, a neighbor managed to sneak into the camp and lock the door of his house, which had been breached by the soldiers. He has no idea what has happened, but his Mazda 5, the source of his livelihood, was crushed by an armored vehicle, as were many other cars.
Mohammed Sarhan, 53, his son-in-law, joins our conversation. He says that he is afraid that, having been evicted from the camp, their family will now be expelled to Jordan. Who will remove the dust from Ranan Lurie’s eyes so he can see what’s going on now?
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