Israel says 40,000 displaced Palestinians in northern West Bank will not be allowed to return
Tthe entrance to the Jenin refugee camp closed by Israeli forces 19, February 2025
Qassam Muaddi reports in Mondoweiss on 24 February 2025:
The Israeli army expanded its ongoing offensive in the northern West Bank to include the town of Qabatiya on Sunday, the second-largest town in the Jenin governorate, six kilometers south of Jenin city. The Israeli army pushed armored vehicles into the town in the early hours of Sunday morning and began demolishing a series of stores at the town’s entrance. According to residents, Israeli bulldozers immediately started to tear out water pipelines in the streets and demolished the outside wall of a historic cemetery containing a memorial for the tombs of 45 Iraqi soldiers who were killed defending Jenin in the 1967 War.
Following the beginning of the Israeli attack on Qabatiya, Israel’s war minister Israel Katz, announced the expansion of the “Iron Wall” offensive to Qabatiya in a written statement. Katz also admitted that Israeli forces had expelled 40,000 Palestinians from three refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarem, a figure reported by UNRWA weeks ago.
Katz said the refugee camps were now “empty of residents” and that “UNRWA activity in the camps has also been stopped,” asserting that he had instructed the Israeli army not to allow the residents of the camps to return to their homes for an entire year. “We will not return to the reality that was in the past,” he said. “We will continue to clear refugee camps and other terror centers to dismantle the battalions and terror infrastructure.”