The Palestinians Israel displaces in the West Bank have nowhere to go

In early February, Israeli forces stormed Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank and began bulldozing homes, demolishing shops and tearing up roads.

Nur Shams is located just outside the northern coastal city of Tulkarem, which has been subjected to increasingly violent Israeli raids in recent years, particularly in the Tulkarem refugee camp.

Israel’s quick, deliberate destruction of the Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps has uprooted thousands of inhabitants and upended countless lives in days.

Hamdan Fahmawi’s shop was damaged and vandalised in the raids – the third time in a year.

On February 26, the 46-year-old, who had left the area, made the risky decision to return with his 17-year-old son and some staff to inspect his shop in Nur Shams and retrieve some cash and important paperwork.

“Israeli soldiers eventually told us to get out [of the shop and leave the camp], so we did. One of them raised his gun at us and we felt we were in danger, but thankfully nobody got hurt,” said Fahmawi.

Displacement

Since Israel’s assaults began on the West Bank on January 21 – days after it had to pause its devastating war on Gaza – Israeli soldiers have forcefully expelled at least 40,000 Palestinians from their homes in the camps.

The stated aim of Israel’s new raids, dubbed Operation Iron Wall, is to root out “Iranian-backed groups” affiliated with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in three refugee camps: Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams.

In 2021, desperate and aggrieved Palestinian youth formed ad-hoc armed groups to resist Israel’s ever-entrenching occupation, according to a report by the International Crisis Group.

However, they hardly pose a threat to Israeli soldiers or illegal settlers, instead clashing with Israeli security forces when they raid the camps.

Israel has still tried to exaggerate the armed groups’ capabilities – framing them as Iranian proxies – to justify destroying camps and uprooting thousands of Palestinians as part of a greater plan to make Palestinian life unbearable in the occupied West Bank, analysts, inhabitants and human rights monitors say.

“I think people [who have been displaced] are lost and they are not sure what to do or what their next steps will be,” said Murad Jadallah, a human rights researcher with Al-Haq, a Palestinian rights group.

“We have reached a new level of uncertainty,” he told Al Jazeera.

Israeli soldiers keep watch as Palestinians leave their homes for safety during a raid by the army in the Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank, February 10, 2025 [Zain Jaafar/AFP]

 

Nourdeen Ali, 17, said many families fled or lost their homes in Nur Shams and ended up staying with relatives and friends just outside the camp.

But then many were uprooted for a second time when Israeli forces raided the homes surrounding Nur Shams and kicked more families out.

Israel typically converts homes in and around the camp into makeshift “interrogation” centres, Ali told Al Jazeera.

“What happens is the Israelis will [come into a neighbourhood] and take over one random house … and then nobody in that area is able to enter or leave their house without risking being shot and killed or searched and arrested,” he said.

‘People will go back’

Israel’s indiscriminate attacks are forcing thousands of people to seek shelter in schools, mosques and football pitches, say inhabitants, who add that the only help available to them is coming from Palestinians who mobilised to provide basic relief – donating blankets, bedding, food and water.

Ali believes that most Palestinians will return to their homes in the camps once Israel halts its raid.

“The way I see things, no matter what the Israelis do, people will go back to the houses where they grew up because a life without the camp is impossible for them,” he told Al Jazeera.

Fahmawi adds that most people from the camp are too poor to afford life in the larger cities, so they will return to Nur Shams even if Israel entrenches its presence to intimidate and harass Palestinians.

“Everywhere in Palestine is dangerous, not just the camps … there is no law and [the Israeli army] can shoot any Palestinian at any time.  However, we don’t have any other place to go. We have no choice,” he told Al Jazeera.

More affluent Palestinians have different considerations.

Jadallah said a close friend relocated to Jordan with his family out of fear that Israel will soon attack and destroy Palestinian cities – such as Tulkarem, Jenin and Ramallah – in the same way they are attacking the camps.

“My friend used to live in Jenin camp, but then he got a good income, so he moved with his family to Jenin city,” Jadallah explained.

“They recently decided to go to Jordan and put their children in school there, because Jenin city is becoming too dangerous,” he added, referring to the Israelis’ frequent military raids that often target civilians.

Fahmawi doesn’t think leaving will make Palestinians safer.

He refers to the recent abduction of Palestinian PhD student Mahmoud Khalil by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 8, despite Khalil having legal permanent residence in the United States.

The administration of US President Donald Trump revoked Khalil’s permanent residency as punishment for him leading Columbia University student protests against what many experts and rights describe as Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“There is no alternative to the homeland,” Fahmawi told Al Jazeera. “In the end, there is no place else for all of us to go … if we die, then we’ll die on our land.”