On the morning of Tuesday 21 January 2025, sixty five year old Sara woke up to strange sounds cutting through the sky above Jenin refugee camp. Loudspeakers fitted to drones were broadcasting messages ordering residents to leave the camp immediately through the “Awda Junction” on the northwestern side.
At first, it seemed to Sara like yet another attempt at psychological warfare that the Israeli forces regularly use against the people of the West Bank, especially since it came only two days after the announcement of a humanitarian truce between the resistance factions in Gaza and the Israeli government.
But what she thought was a bluff turned out to be the prelude to a disaster. The next morning, the drones returned, flying at low altitude, repeating evacuation orders between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon, shouting in Arabic: “Evacuate your homes. If you do not, you will bear the consequences. We will destroy the camp.” The drones came so close they almost touched the windows and circled above the homes again and again, in a scene that filled everyone with terror.
Sara, who eventually had to leave her home under the watchful eyes of the soldiers, recounts: “We thought we would be gone for a day or two and then come back. We walked out with only the clothes we were wearing. We took nothing at all. I even left my medicine behind. The situation was extremely harsh. When you have children or a person with a disability, you think of nothing but their safety. As we headed toward Awda Junction, the soldiers nearby started shooting into the air, perhaps to scare us, but we kept walking until we reached it. From that day on, I have not returned to my home.”
Sara was not alone. In a report published on 20 November 2025, Human Rights Watch documented that more than 32 thousand Palestinians were displaced from three refugee camps in the West Bank (Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams) during January and February of the same year, and that the Israeli authorities still prevent them from returning.
The 105 page report, titled “All My Dreams Were Gone: Israel’s Forcible Transfer of Palestinians in the West Bank”, explains that the three camps were almost emptied of their residents, in the largest displacement operation the West Bank has witnessed since 1967. Ten months after the operation, the camps are still nearly deserted, while tens of thousands of Palestinians live in a state of continuous displacement, denied the right of return despite the cessation of military operations around them.
The “Iron Wall” Operation – How the Campaign Unfolded
The “Iron Wall” operation, the name the occupation gave to its military campaign in the three camps, began on 21 January 2025, when Israeli forces launched their first assault on Jenin camp. The operation then extended to Tulkarm camp on 27 January, and later to Nur Shams camp on 9 February. The common thread in the three operations was the same pattern repeated in each location: identical tactics, the same military machinery, and the forced displacement of thousands of residents from their homes under the weight of fear and live fire.
Jenin Camp – The Beginning
On the morning of 21 January, the assault on Jenin began with unprecedented force: Apache helicopters spraying the area with bullets, armed drones, armored vehicles, military bulldozers, and hundreds of soldiers storming the camp from several directions.
Fatima, forty four years old, recalls the first moments of the invasion: “It was close to noon, and I heard the sound of an aircraft as if it was firing at people. We hid inside the house. We had no idea what was happening. We stayed like that for five or ten minutes, then people outside started screaming and telling us we had to get out immediately.”
Evacuation orders came intermittently and without clarity, broadcast from drones equipped with loudspeakers demanding that residents leave through Awda Junction in the northwest. Sara, who was forced out of her home under the eyes of the soldiers, recounts: “When we reached Awda Junction, we found it full of soldiers. There was an improvised checkpoint. They only allowed me to pass after I looked into a device that scanned my eye. I saw other people being pulled aside afterward. We did not understand why or where they were being taken.”
Tulkarm Camp – The Scene Repeated
Only six days later, on 27 January, the operation rolled toward Tulkarm camp following almost the exact same scenario. Ground forces, drones, tanks and bulldozers destroying everything in their path, and forced displacement under the weight of rockets and live ammunition.
Laila, fifty four years old, who was at home in the northeastern part of the camp when the incursion began, says: “It was midday. We were cooking. We knew they were coming; we had been following the news on Telegram. Suddenly they broke down the door. Around twenty five soldiers entered with a dog. It was terrifying. It felt like a new Nakba.”
Laila continues as she recalls the details of the raid on her home: “They were shouting, turning everything upside down, destroying the furniture without explanation. Some of them were masked, and some carried grenades and large machine guns. They pushed us out of the house. When my pregnant daughter asked for milk and clothes for the children, one of the soldiers said to her: You do not have a home here anymore. You must leave.”
In the chaos of escape, Laila’s daughter, who was four months pregnant, was injured and fell to the ground. Laila says she later lost the pregnancy, and that she was still overwhelmed by grief when Human Rights Watch interviewed her in March. She adds that she saw military bulldozers, including a Caterpillar D9, clearing the rubble and opening roads, while large parts of her area were already destroyed from previous operations.
By five in the afternoon, Israeli forces had stormed the camp from almost all its entrances, while residents transmitted what they saw via Telegram in images and videos that were later documented by human rights organizations.
Nur Shams Camp – The Third Version of the Operation
On 9 February, it was Nur Shams camp’s turn. Israeli forces repeated the same pattern of incursions, forced departures and large scale destruction, all broadcast live in full view of the entire world.
One witness recounts that soldiers blew up the door of a house with an explosive device before storming the neighborhood: “My husband, our fourteen year old daughter and I were waiting in fear inside the house. We saw them use heavy machinery to demolish the garden wall before ordering us to leave and abandon the camp.” The tragedy reached its peak when the blast used to break into the house killed twenty one year old Rahaf al Ashqar and severely wounded her father.
Systematic Ethnic Cleansing
Nadia Hardman, senior researcher on refugee and migrant rights at Human Rights Watch, recalls the scenes from the first months of 2025: “In that period, the Israeli authorities pushed around 32 thousand Palestinians away from their homes in West Bank camps, uprooting them with no legal basis and denying them any path to return. While the world stared at Gaza, crimes were being committed in the West Bank in silence: war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. All of this requires an investigation that does not flatter anyone and accountability that shows no leniency.”
The organization based this conclusion on the testimonies of 31 displaced people who carried their stories on their shoulders, on satellite imagery capturing the destruction from above, on demolition data, and on videos that documented events moment by moment. According to the report, the first six months of the operation saw the destruction of 850 buildings in the three camps, as if the bulldozers of war were trying to erase an entire memory, not just stone. At the same time, United Nations reports recorded recurring scenes: torn up streets, military vehicles stationed in place, checkpoints drawing new borders by force, and bulldozers carving their way over homes and memories.
This operation was not just another violation, but an explicit slap in the face of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states, with language that admits no ambiguity: “The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, nor shall it deport or transfer the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory, in whole or in part, regardless of motive.”
Yet reality was something entirely different. The organization documented a series of violations that made the displacement scene far harsher than any legal text could describe.
No Safe Evacuation – Departure Under the Barrel of the Gun
Israeli forces stormed the camps with no clear warning and no plans resembling what is called an “evacuation”. Soldiers entered, shots were fired, and the screams of civilians mixed with the sound of aircraft overhead, while snipers took positions on rooftops monitoring every step taken by those fleeing.
Escape Routes With No Direction
In Jenin, there were no defined routes, only floating orders to leave. In Tulkarm and Nur Shams, instructions felt more like traps: contradictory, confusing, and sometimes deadly. The organization documented cases where people searching for a safe passage were shot at while attempting to flee.
Displacement With No Support and No Roof
When people left the camps, they walked into the unknown. Some sought refuge in the homes of relatives that were already overcrowded, families piling on top of one another. Others spread out in mosques, schools and charitable associations. There were no tents set up for them, no food, no medicine, and no official hand extended to say “you are not alone”. The criminal entity that displaced them left them to face their fate alone.
The Largest Displacement Since 1967
The Human Rights Watch report indicates that what happened in the three camps was not a passing military operation, but the largest wave of displacement Palestinians have faced since 1967. Gradually, the picture became clearer. Talk of “reconfiguring the area” or “opening new access routes”, as Israeli authorities claimed, was nothing more than a thin linguistic curtain hiding a much harsher reality. “Opening routes”, as the occupation argued in its response, required, in its own words, “demolishing rows of buildings”, while the truth on the ground said something else entirely: uprooting people, not removing stones.
What took place was not an engineering upgrade or an urban planning exercise, but systematic displacement, a calculated expulsion with a clear intent to prevent return. The organization documented this pattern through indicators that could not be ignored. During the six months following the operation, the camps remained completely closed to their residents. Live fire was used against those who tried to return to their homes, even just to take one last look. The rare few who were allowed to enter did so under harsh conditions: a few minutes to collect essentials, then a final departure with no return.
All these details weave together a single narrative. What happened was neither accidental nor random. It was a plan that preceded its execution, a premeditated intention to empty the camps and turn them into spaces without residents, then fold them into a wider project, one that seeks to reshape the West Bank itself, not as a society living on its land, but as a sprawling settlement stretching over places that were once refugee camps full of life.
A Call for Accountability
The organization confirmed, based on live testimonies and visual and field evidence beyond doubt, that the policies applied by occupation forces inside the three camps are not scattered abuses but an interconnected part of the crimes of apartheid and persecution that Israeli authorities commit against Palestinians.
The organization notes that the scale and nature of these violations place senior Israeli officials inside the circle of international accountability under the principle of “command responsibility”, a responsibility that does not expire with time and cannot be wiped away by excuses. The report identified a number of political and military leaders who, in the view of the organization, should be brought to trial on charges of committing crimes against humanity.
Among them are Benjamin Netanyahu, Yisrael Katz, Bezalel Smotrich, Major General Avi Bluth, Major General Herzi Halevi and Major General Eyal Zamir. These are names that are repeated at the top of the power structure and that are intertwined with the decisions that led to the displacement and gradual erasure of Palestinian presence.
The report did not stop at condemnation. It called for concrete measures, including targeted sanctions, an arms export ban, suspension of preferential trade agreements, a ban on dealing with settlement products, and enforcement of arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court. The organization wants these steps to send a clear message that the world does not turn a blind eye when injustice becomes this blatant.
For her part, Nadia Hardman, senior researcher on refugee and migrant rights, reiterated a call that carries the weight and bitterness of the moment, saying: “Governments across the world must act immediately to prevent the worsening of repression in the West Bank and to impose sanctions on Netanyahu, Katz and officials involved in serious crimes against Palestinians.”
With this cry, Hardman sought to sound an alarm, not only demanding justice but trying to awaken a dormant global conscience and push it to stop a humanitarian collapse that is expanding in the shadows, far from the attention of those who promote double standards and fake principles.
The organization concluded in its report that the totality of facts, testimonies and documented images reveals, in a way that admits no alternative reading, a deliberate policy pursued by Israeli authorities that does not aim merely at temporarily removing residents, but at destroying the camps themselves and permanently preventing their people from returning.
What occurred, the organization affirms, goes far beyond anything that could be justified under the umbrella of international humanitarian law and clearly falls within the framework of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
This meticulous documentation, supported by field evidence, opens a wide door, if the will exists, for the international community to move toward accountability and the realization of justice for the victims and for those who witnessed these violations with their own eyes, so that these heavy pages are not closed without reckoning.
The Ball Is Back in the Court of Governments
Perhaps what Human Rights Watch documented in the West Bank does not come as a surprise to those who have followed the course of events. Since the outbreak of the war in October 2023, Israeli forces have killed nearly one thousand Palestinians in the West Bank. The occupation authorities have expanded the use of administrative detention without charge or trial, intensified home demolitions and illegal settlement activity, and at the same time, violence by armed, state backed settlers has increased, alongside a rise in complaints of torture and ill treatment of Palestinian detainees.
From this angle, forced displacement and other patterns of systematic oppression form part of the crimes of apartheid and persecution that Israeli authorities commit against Palestinians, as documented by the evidence. These are not merely a record of abuses, but legal material that can be used to pursue the occupation before international judicial forums.
This volume of documented evidence strengthens the Palestinian side’s ability to push its legal files forward, whether in exposing the occupation’s practices or in revealing the falsity of its claims to respect international law and human rights standards. The report, with its testimonies, images and data, can form an important element before the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.
The matter does not stop at international courts alone. Some states have domestic legislation that allows the prosecution of war criminals outside their territories, in addition to parallel legal avenues such as the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and some other regional mechanisms.
In the end, the convergence of these legal and diplomatic tracks can create a growing international pressure network, vertically and horizontally, that deepens Israel’s isolation and exposes its true face before global public opinion. This rising momentum can restore the Palestinian cause to its natural position at the top of the international agenda and prepare the ground to place the ball once again in the court of Arab and Islamic governments, as no more justifications or additional evidence are needed to condemn the occupier.
These governments, if they have the will, can repair at least a small part of the deep fractures caused by their silence and abandonment of Palestinians since the war began, and can reclaim a long absent role in protecting the Palestinian people and their just cause. The familiar question remains: will the opportunity be used, or will abandonment turn into something like a genetic code that cannot be shed, at least for the current generation of regimes and governments?
