West Bank: UN rights report warns of forcible displacement from three refugee camps

The report said military, police and other forces deployed during Israel’s Operation Iron Wall offensive killed civilians, destroyed hundreds of homes, damaged roads and other infrastructure, cut off water and electricity, and blocked humanitarian access to the Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps. 

Israeli forces went door to door ordering residents to leave.

Some displaced Palestinians told OHCHR that Israeli officers said there would be no more refugee camps and that they should “all go to Jordan”. 

Widespread destruction

By October 2025, 52 per cent of structures in Jenin refugee camp, 48 per cent in Nur Shams and 36 per cent in Tulkarem had been destroyed or damaged.

The report said the large-scale, long-term and systematic displacement of over 33,000 Palestinians from the camps during the operation raises serious concerns of the crime against humanity of forcible transfer. 

It said Israeli forces used airstrikes, armoured bulldozers and controlled detonations to render entire camps uninhabitable in the absence of imperative military necessity – actions it said also raise concerns of collective punishment and ethnic cleansing.

Some 102 Palestinians, including 21 children, were killed during the period covered by the report – 46 per cent of all killings by Israeli forces in the West Bank over that period.

Shot on the way to pray

Among them were Sondos Shalabi, who was eight months pregnant and was shot dead as she tried to drive away from Nur Shams camp, and ten-year-old Saddam Hussein Rajab, who was shot in the stomach in Tulkarem as he waited for his father to walk to the mosque with him.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk said the way the operation was conducted suggested its aim was to expel as many Palestinians as possible and make way for more illegal Israeli settlements. 

He called on Israel to end what he described as its 59-year occupation of Palestinian territory and to comply with the International Court of Justice’s finding, more than two years ago, that it must end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.

On 23 February 2025, Israel’s Defence Minister ordered the military to remain in the three camps and said displaced Palestinians would not be allowed to return. 

The UN’s Palestine refugee relief agency, UNRWA, says around 33,362 people remain displaced as of July this year.