Sheltering in a neighboring village, displaced Palestinians in West Bank say Israeli troops forced them out
A hall that was converted into a camp for displaced Palestinian residents evacuated from refugee camps, in Kafr al-Labad, February 2025
Hagar Shezaf reports in Haaretz on 21 February 2025:
Mattresses span the floor in a hall which has been converted into a camp for displaced people in Kufr al-Lubad, near Tul Karm. Displaced people from the Tul Karm and Nur al-Shams refugee camps who were either ordered by the army to evacuate or who left their homes out of fear in recent weeks, during the “Iron Wall” operation in the West Bank, are sleeping there.
Their testimonies reveal some of the army’s methods: breaking into houses and forcing the residents to leave, sometimes without any provisions for their journey, using Palestinians as human shields and holding them for several days without any communication to the outside world.
According to estimates, in the current IDF operation, the number of displaced Palestinians from refugee camps in the northern West Bank ranges between 30,000 and 40,000. Around 500 of them found refuge in Kufr al-Lubad, either in rented apartments or in displaced person camps. They didn’t come here by chance: They say soldiers ordered them to leave when they raided the camp on the rainy night of February 9, when the operation in Nur al-Shams began.
“In the middle of the night, the army completely surrounded the camp, and started calling on people to get out through loudspeakers,” said Ibrahim, one of the camp’s residents. “Then the army broke into my house and took me. It was rainy and cold. The soldiers used me as a human shield, walked behind me and placed a weapon on me, so that any shots that hit them would also hit me.”
He said the soldiers took him to “three or four neighborhoods, until we reached the Al-Manshiya neighborhood at the refugee camp, and from there they told me to go south. I had nothing despite the clothes I was wearing. I didn’t even have any socks on when I left.”
Volunteers from the village of Ramin, bring food to displaced people from the Tul Karm refugee camps,February 2025
in January, the army began operating in the larger Tul Karm refugee camp and evacuating its residents. On Tuesday alone, 11 houses were destroyed there in order to widen the roads in the camp to allow military vehicles access to it’s center. The demolitions cause anxiety among the displaced people, as they don’t know if – and whereto – they would be able to return. The army denies that there is an official policy of evacuating people in the West Bank, and claims that it only allows those who wish to leave to do so. However, numerous testimonies indicate a pattern in which soldiers force residents to leave their homes.
While he was forced out, Ibrahim says that the soldiers let his parents stay in their home at the outskirts of the camp, but they suffer from water outages and food shortages. Local stores are closed most of the time, and food enters the camp irregularly, and in small quantities. In the meantime, Ibrahim and around 70 other people have found temporary shelter in Kufr al-Lubad. At the entrance to the hall where men are sleeping, somebody is frying falafel on a makeshift gas stove, next to crates of vegetables.
Earlier in February, the army raided the hall and arrested three people, its residents say. In an attempt to lift people’s spirits, a ceremony was later held to honor a woman about to get married, and on Tuesday remnants of the decorations were still visible.
The hosting village residents say that everything in the temporary shelter originates from initiatives of private individuals who mobilized to help the displaced. “The day the attack [on the Nur al-Shams camp] began, people from the village came at dawn to welcome our brothers,” said Abdullah Yassin Fakha, the imam of one of the mosques in the village, who oversees the aid in the shelter, “Everyone mobilized. Somebody brought a mattress, another person brought a blanket. There was no response from official local or international organizations, it’s all a grassroots effort.”
Walid, from the Tul Karm refugee camp, came to Kufr al-Lubad with his wife and six children. “We were expelled in the middle of the night in the rain,” he said, “They [the soldiers] broke down our neighbors’ door and then came to us, saying, ‘Come on, get out, get out of the house’. The soldier said that we could return in two weeks. Meanwhile, we have been here for 24 days.” He says he and his family left the camp without any clothes or money because the soldiers rushed them, and he was forced to wear the same clothes for ten days. His children, he added, do not go to school, which is in the camp they have left.
The frequent military operations have become a fact of life for the residents of the Tul Karm refugee camps. “They come on a weekly basis,” said Walid, “We started trying to anticipate when it would happen every week, if they would come on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, and prepare for it: fill water and collect food for four or five days.”
A hall, which was transformed into a displaced person camp in Kafr al-Labad for evacuees from the Tul Karm refugee camps, February 2025
Previous operations already forced the family to leave the camp, for a day or two at a time. Due to the prolonged displacement, this time the thought occurred to him that Israel’s objective might be to dismantle the camp. “What they are doing is collective punishment,” he said, “You don’t want the gunmen, you want to punish everyone. You’re looking for 20 men, and because of that you punish 40,000? It is a failure of the army.”
Nur Shams Camp residents repeatedly mention two of its residents: Sundus Shalabi, a pregnant woman who was shot dead at the camp entrance while attempting to leave it, and Rahaf al-Ashqar, who was killed when soldiers place explosives on her home’s door. The host village also experienced grief recently, after soldiers shot dead the 7-year-old Saddam Rajab while he was visiting his father in Tul Karm.
On Tuesday, Physicians for Human Rights–Israel set up a mobile clinic in Kufr al-Lubad. Many displaced persons gather outside, saying that they did not have time to take their medications for chronic illnesses. Clinic director, Salah Hajj Yahya, said that the volunteer doctors and nurses treated about 400 displaced persons that day. “The situation is terrible and very sad,” he said. “The right to health, housing, water, freedom of movement, and education is infringed. People are hungry and have no medicine or equipment or warm clothing in the cold weather.”
He said that the blow to UNRWA operations worsens the condition of the refugee camps’ residents. On top of that are the debts of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah to suppliers, because Israel has frozen tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, causing a shortage of medications. “We call on the Israeli government and army to stop harming the innocent, who are the vast majority of the refugee camps’ residents,” he said.
One of the clinic’s patients is Abdallah Barnawi, 60, from Nur al-Shams, who is blind and diabetic. He used to work in the Israeli cities of Hadera and Or Akiva. He said that, in the previous operation two months ago, the army partially demolished his house and store. On Tuesday, he was notified that his home was demolished again. He was returning from his son’s home when the army entered the refugee camp.
“The soldiers told me to stand and beat me with a rifle,” he said. “When I fell to the floor, they dragged me by my jacket. I told the soldier, ‘I’m like your father’, and he replied, ‘I have no father’.” He said that the soldiers took him to a building that the army had requisitioned, where he was held with another family for two days, even though he tried to explain that he was sick. “There were soldiers on every floor of the building,” he said. “They took my phone and everyone’s else’s and did not let us leave, except to go to the bathroom. After two days, they gave me water and sugar and told me to go, but not toward my house, because that was forbidden.” He said that his wife and children did not know where he was until he was released and called them.
The Israeli military said in response that “the IDF does not evacuate the population in Judea and Samaria, but allows those who want to get away from combat zones to do so safely. The forces are operating pursuant to international law and the IDF’s values, limiting harm to civilians as much as possible. The order explicitly forbid the use of non-combatants for military missions, and any breach of the procedures will be investigated and handled.”
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