Israel is quietly erasing Palestinian refugee camps from existence in the West Bank
Palestinians carry their belongings after being forced to leave their homes by Israeli forces during a raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem, 17 December 2025
Shatha Hanaysha reports in Mondoweiss on 8 January 2026:
Last week, the Israeli army demolished 25 residential buildings in Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem in the northern West Bank. The homes used to belong to dozens of families who were displaced from their homes a year ago, alongside the rest of the camp’s residents. Now their displacement has become permanent.
“The neighborhood is gone, and our house is being demolished by the Israeli army,” Motaz Jamil, a young resident of the camp, told Mondoweiss as he watched his home being leveled. “Our neighbors, our families, our sad and happy memories — all of it is being erased.”
This is not the first time Jamil’s community has experienced displacement. Being refugees, they all came from the villages dotting Palestine’s coast in 1948, when the state of Israel was founded. “We were displaced from Jaffa, and today we are being displaced once again,” Jamil explained.
During the Nakba, Israel altered the geography of the over 500 Palestinian villages that it ethnically cleansed in 1948. This included demolishing homes, planting forests on their remains, and erasing traces of the people who used to live there.
Today, camp residents say Israel is doing something similar — engaging in a process of “re-engineering” the camp through extensive demolition operations. Residents who spoke to Mondoweiss say that the aim is to “kill the idea of the refugee camp” by altering its features.
In January 2025, the Israeli army launched “Operation Iron Wall,” the most wide-ranging military campaign of its kind meant to root out resistance groups in the towns and refugee camps of the northern West Bank.
The Israeli strategy for “re-engineer” the camps is part of Israel’s broader project to alter the social, demographic, and geographic characteristics of the West Bank, especially communities that have served as incubators for resistance.
Years prior, in 2022, communities in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas had witnessed the revival of armed resistance and the rise of resistance “brigades” largely based in the refugee camps of Jenin, Nur Shams, Tulkarem, and al-Far’a. During the multi-year crackdown that followed, the Israeli army launched repeated raids into the refugee camps, where it faced operational difficulties due to the camps’ narrow alleyways. During its most recent “Iron Wall” offensive, Israeli forces bulldozed many of them while demolishing entire residential blocks and carving new military paths into the heart of the camps, meant to create “safe roads for our forces,” according to the Israeli army.