The Electronic Intifada 22 May 2025
Palestinians carry the body of Hikmat Abdul Nabi, 34, during a funeral in Askar al-Balad, east of Nablus, in the West Bank, on 11 May 2025.
APA imagesIsrael launched an unprecedented military assault on the nearby cities of Jenin and Tulkarm in January that has been ongoing. The two cities’ three refugee camps, housing nearly 65,000 Palestinians as of two years ago, have been emptied of nearly 40,000 of their residents, who were forcibly displaced and barred from return.
All eyes are now on Nablus, which lies south of the two cities.
In recent months, Israeli occupation forces escalated their raids on the city, specifically targeting the Balata and al-Ain refugee camps.
Dozens of families were temporarily displaced before being allowed to return. Residents received direct threats of a prolonged assault, including flyers warning of impending military action.
Established in 1950 on the eastern edges of Nablus city, Balata is the most populous of around 20 refugee camps across the West Bank. Over 33,000 Palestinians, including 11,000 children, live in an area of 0.25 square kilometers, in what can only be described as a slum.
Under international urban planning standards, the land upon which Balata camp sits should only accommodate between 2,000 to 5,000 people.
“There is a lot of fear among residents of the Balata refugee camp of a potential long invasion,” Imad Zaki, head of the camp’s popular committee, told The Electronic Intifada.
“Everyone in Balata, and we as local officials, expect to a very high degree that Israel will replicate what it did in Jenin and Tulkarm, in Nablus,” he continued.
Despite their certainty of an impending assault, Zaki explained there is not much that can be done to prepare.
“We cannot make any contingency plans. Where are we going to go with 33,000 people?”
Balata – like other refugee camps – was established following the Nakba, the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their home towns and villages between 1947 and 1949.
“If the Israeli occupation thinks that there will be calm and that they will end the issues of 1948 refugees, the exact opposite will happen,” Zaki said, referring to Israel’s long-term goal of stripping Palestinian refugees, including those internally displaced in refugee camps, of their internationally recognized right of return.
“I cannot force residents who are displaced, or whose homes are demolished, with 65 percent unemployment in the camp, not to take any action. The occupation is the one that will pay the price,” said Zaki.
Mass demolitions
Israel’s campaign is the largest operation of forcible displacement of Palestinians since the military occupation of 1967.
Within the first month of the assault, tens of thousands of people were forced out of their homes on foot – many at gunpoint – carrying only basic belongings. The vast majority haven’t been able to return since.
Displaced families continue to live in shelters, mosques, wedding halls and schools, scattered across the West Bank.
Earlier this month, Israeli forces informed their Palestinian Authority liaison office in Jenin that residents will be able to return to one area designated a “green zone.”
Israeli occupation forces remain stationed in and around the camps for the fourth consecutive month, preventing entry and exit. In February, the Israeli army asserted it will remain inside the refugee camps, which are located within city centers, for at least a year.
Last month, soldiers also sealed off the main entrances to the Jenin refugee camp with metal gates, further restricting movement.
More than 130 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, and dozens more wounded, according to UN monitoring group OCHA. Over 90 percent of those killed were in the six northern governorates of Jenin, Tubas, Tulkarm, Nablus, Qalqilya and Salfit – where the ongoing Israeli military assault has been concentrated.
Hundreds of homes have been demolished, and thousands more sustaining heavy damages including through explosives, bulldozers and severe vandalism. Vast stretches of roads and underground infrastructure have been dug out, both in the refugee camps as well as in the cities themselves.
The Israeli army is also carrying out unprecedented mass demolitions of homes inside the camps.
A few weeks ago, the military informed Palestinian Authority officials that it will be tearing down more than 100 residential buildings in Tulkarm’s two refugee camps in the coming days. Each building consists of an average of four apartments – home to four families – meaning hundreds of families are being rendered homeless.
“While such actions are not uncommon under the occupation, the decision still came as a shock to us. This is unprecedented,” Faisal Salameh told The Electronic Intifada. He is the deputy governor of Tulkarm and head of the camp’s popular committee.
“If people thought they were going to return at some point, they are now surprised to find out that their homes are demolished, burned and uninhabitable. This is a systematic policy of destruction,” he added.
“The occupation has rendered our homes and our camps uninhabitable in order to create a coercive environment and push us to leave for good.”
Unprecedented escalation
Israel’s assault marks an unprecedented and dangerous escalation in Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
The mass, deliberate displacement and destruction of entire refugee camps – openly declared and executed as a strategic objective by the Israeli military and government – raises serious questions about the fate of Palestinian survivors of the 1948 Nakba and their descendants, particularly if the operation expands to other areas of the West Bank.
Not only that, it puts into question the next phase for the millions of Palestinians across the entire West Bank, as Israeli forces now station themselves in the heart of Palestinian city centers which make up so-called Area A – which is nominally under the governance of the Palestinian Authority.
Analysts believe that the worst is yet to come.
“The idea that Israel may limit its military operation to the refugee camps of the northern occupied West Bank is completely unlikely. The possibility that it may extend to Nablus and the rest of the West Bank is very possible,” Nablus-based political analyst Suleiman Bisharat told The Electronic Intifada.
Along with Nablus’ refugee camps, Israeli forces have intensified their raids on other refugee camps across the West Bank.
In the Dheisheh refugee camp in the southern city of Bethlehem, soldiers hung up flyers warning residents against the “heavy price” that refugee camps of the northern West Bank have “paid for terror and armed activities.” Incursions into Ramallah’s refugee camps of Amari and Jalazone have also increased.
Besides the refugee camps, Bisharat believes Israel as a matter of policy seeks to take over the entire West Bank.
“The West Bank is at the core of the aspirations of the Israeli state. That Israel may retreat from its policies in the occupied West Bank is impossible, unless some major global transformations force it to,” he said.
“Israel claims that there is a security rationale for this operation. But that is not the real goal. The goals are political: imposing Israeli control over the West Bank as well as ending the issue of 1948 Palestinian refugees,” said Bisharat.
Back in Balata, residents who were once displaced from their lands in beautiful coastal cities in historic Palestine – like Jaffa and Haifa – now live in overcrowded, poorly-ventilated apartments that receive little-to-no sunlight. Children make their way through alleyways barely the width of an average human being.
“There are at least 60,000 Palestinian refugees living in three refugee camps across Nablus. If they are displaced, they will have nowhere to go. It will be a catastrophe on all levels,” said Imad Zaki, the head of the Balata refugee camp popular committee.
The ongoing displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Jenin and Tulkarm for the fourth month, said Zaki, is pushing residents of Balata to stay put.
“Those who have relatives outside the Balata refugee camp and may have initially considered leaving to protect their families, now say they’d rather be martyred in their homes than be stranded in the streets,” he continued.
“We will not leave our homes. We have nowhere else to go. We want to return to our lands in 1948 [historic Palestine].”
Zena Al Tahhan is an independent writer and TV reporter based in occupied Jerusalem.
