Stop the silent transfer of Palestinians in the West Bank

The Haaretz lead editorial on 13 October 2026:

While the eyes of the world are on the Gaza Strip, with ministers and Knesset members in the governing coalition openly declaring their desire to transfer its residents out of it (aka “to encourage voluntary emigration”), an ongoing mass displacement of Palestinians from their homes is taking place in practice in the West Bank, yet has not garnered public attention.

According to UN data, more than 33,000 residents of the Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur al-Shams refugee camps have been unable to return home since Operation Iron Wall began in January 2025.

On Sunday, the Supreme Court ordered the state to inform it by November 23 whether it is possible to accelerate the steps that would enable the displaced to return home, and also to explain what humanitarian provisions have been made for them. The decision was made in response to a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which termed what is happening there “the largest wave of displacement in the West Bank since 1967.”

Once again, Israel has been following its usual modus operandi in the occupied territories, in which the temporary always becomes permanent. Operation Iron Wall was launched with the declared goal of eliminating terrorist infrastructure. But within a few weeks, the refugee camps had been emptied of tens of thousands of residents. The army initially claimed that it wasn’t evicting the residents.

But the residents said soldiers had ordered them to leave and weren’t allowing them to return. And even when the army reported in August that the security situation had improved, it also said it didn’t plan to allow the residents to return home. Moreover, the army has demolished some of the homes in the refugee camps, so some of these residents have no home to which to return.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich seized the opportunity to attack the court. “Israel’s security is not justiciable,” he said. “The one responsible for security is the army.” That manipulative statement is typical of representatives of the settlement enterprise; they always use security arguments to conceal their aspiration to control all the land and remove all the residents from it.

As readers may recall, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced more than a year and a half ago that Israel had no intention of allowing the evicted residents to return for a long time. And the truth is that the settlers and their representatives in the government want to demolish the refugee camps. At the same time, Israel’s efforts to end operations in the territories by UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, raise suspicions that this might be part of a broader plan to erase the Palestinian refugee problem.

Security considerations do not absolve the state of its obligation to protect West Bank residents’ rights – not just to protect their security, but to reduce infringements of those rights insofar as possible. The Supreme Court must stop enabling the country to evade its obligations toward a population living under occupation and insist that the state take urgent steps to enable the tens of thousands of displaced people to return home.

Not giving them the opportunity to return would constitute population transfer, which is defined as a war crime. And after that, nobody should be surprised when Israel finds itself in the dock on charges of transfer and persecution.

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