GENEVA – A UN Human Rights report published today says Israeli security forces forcibly displaced the entire Palestinian populations of three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank in January and February 2025 and are still preventing their return, in violation of international law.
The report, titled Destruction of Palestinian refugee camps in northern West Bank, says Israeli military, police and other forces deployed as part of the ongoing Operation Iron Wall killed civilians, destroyed hundreds of homes, damaged roads and other infrastructure, cut off water and electricity and barred humanitarian access into the Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps, and went door to door forcing residents to leave. Some 52 per cent of structures in the Jenin refugee camp, 48 per cent in Nur Shams refugee camp and 36 per cent in Tulkarm refugee camp had been destroyed or damaged in the Israeli operation by October 2025.
The three camps are among a total of 19 in the West Bank that were established to shelter Palestinian refugees after the mass forced expulsion during the Nakba in 1948 and have been administered by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
“A few days into Operation Iron Wall, Israeli security forces consolidated their control over the Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps and forcibly displaced their population in their entirety,” says the report, which is based on independent monitoring and documentation by the UN Human Rights Office.
The Office was informed by some of the Palestinians displaced that they were told by Israeli officers there would be no more refugee camps and that they should “all go to Jordan.”
The report emphasises that large-scale, long-term and systematic displacement of over 33,000 Palestinians from refugee camps during Israel’s Operation Iron Wall raises serious concerns of the crime against humanity of forcible transfer. The use of airstrikes, armored bulldozers and controlled detonations, to render entire camps uninhabitable, to force the displacement of their residents and to prevent their return, in the absence of imperative military necessity, are not permissible under international law, appear to amount to collective punishment and raise concerns of ethnic cleansing.
“The way Operation Iron Wall has been conducted suggests its aim was to expel as many Palestinians as possible and to make way for more illegal Israeli settlements, in further violation of international law,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.
“Israel must end its 59-year occupation of Palestinian territory and halt any efforts to forcibly displace more Palestinians and to further break the contiguity of a future Palestinian state. It must take steps to comply with its obligations under international law, as clarified by the International Court of Justice’s explicit conclusion – already more than two years ago – that it must end its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible.”
Some 102 Palestinians, including 21 children were killed by Israeli forces during the operation in the period covered by the report, representing 46 percent of all killings by Israeli forces in the West Bank during that period.
They carried out airstrikes, used combat drones and shoulder-launched explosive projectiles – all of them weapons designed for war and not for law enforcement operations – and killed and injured many unarmed people who posed no apparent threat to them. Sondos Shalabi, who was eight months pregnant, was shot dead as she tried to drive away from Nur Shams camp; Saddam Hussein Rajab, aged 10, was shot in the stomach in Tulkarm while waiting for his father so that they could go to the mosque together; and 43-year-old Ahmad Nimer Al-Shayeb was shot as he was attempting to leave Jenin by car. In another incident in Jenin, a two-year-old girl was shot in the head and killed by Israeli forces while having dinner with her mother and aunt.
The Israeli occupying authorities claim those killed in the operation were terrorists. However, an Israeli internal investigation into the killing of eight-months pregnant Shalabi, for instance, found that she was shot because she was looking suspiciously at the ground. This after the Israeli military had reportedly loosened its rules of engagement in the occupied West Bank to permit soldiers to use live ammunition against people “messing with the ground” – on the suspicion of planting explosives.
On 23 February 2025, Israel’s Defence Minister ordered the Israeli military to remain in the three camps and said Palestinians who were displaced from them would not be allowed to return. As of July this year, about 33,362 displaced Palestine refugees from these camps remained forcibly displaced, according to UNRWA.
