Israeli forces demolished more than a dozen apartment buildings at a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, a Palestinian official told CNN, the latest move in a military operation that has displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Since Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack, Israel has engaged in an increasingly militarized campaign that it says targets West Bank militants, employing tactics like airstrikes that were once nearly unheard of there.
The Israel Defense Forces launched a major campaign – “Operation Iron Wall” – focused on the northern West Bank last month.
That operation, Israel’s defense minister said last month, was explicitly applying the lessons of Israel’s “repeated raids in Gaza.” Israel’s war in Gaza has destroyed around 90 percent of housing units, according to the United Nations.
The West Bank operation has displaced at least 40,000 Palestinians in the northern West Bank from their homes, according to the United Nations.
Abdullah Kamil, the governor of Tulkarem in the West Bank, told CNN Wednesday that the demolitions carried out Tuesday destroyed buildings that had housed dozens of families over several floors.
“The Israeli military are doing this under pretext of security and fighting terrorism,” he said. It is a “purely political” operation, he alleged, to satisfy hardliners in the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In November, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – who is in charge of Jewish settlements in the West Bank – ordered preparations for the annexation of the settlements, saying that US President Donald Trump’s victory “brings an important opportunity for the state of Israel.”
Palestinians want the West Bank, as well as Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem, for a future independent state. Jewish settlements there are considered illegal under international law.
Israel launched Operation Iron Wall two days after the Gaza ceasefire began, saying it was aimed at eliminating “terrorists and terror infrastructure” and at “ensuring terrorism does not return” following its completion. The Israeli military said on Tuesday that its soldiers were operating in Tulkarem to “neutralize terrorist infrastructure.” It said that its clearing operations would enable “freedom of movement within the camp area, thereby enhancing operational flexibility for forces to effectively thwart terrorism in the region.”
Videos on a Palestinian television channel showed bulldozers demolishing homes in what the outlet said was Tulkarem refugee camp. Other videos seen by CNN from a local journalist showed the scene from another angle with a bulldozer in the tight streets of the refugee camp and soldiers walking in its alleys.
The Israeli military also said Tuesday it had arrested 25 people in the northern West Bank it says were suspected of “involvement in terrorist activity across the area.”
“During the activity, the troops collected findings and weapons used by the enemy,” the military added.
‘Spillover’ of Gaza war
Israel’s military operation in the West Bank that started in the Jenin refugee camp last month has since expanded to the Tulkarem, Nur Shams, and El Far’a refugee camps, according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Kamil, the Tulkarem governor, told CNN that 85 percent of the residents of the Nur Shams and Tulkarem camps had been displaced – approximately 16,000 people altogether.
He alleged that Israeli forces had raided houses in the middle of the night. Many properties in the Nur Shams camp had been extensively damaged, he said, and water and electricity in both camps had been cut off.
UNRWA warned that the forced displacement of Palestinian communities in the northern West Bank had been escalating at an “alarming pace.”
The agency said the West Bank had suffered 38 airstrikes this year alone, with advanced weaponry and controlled detonations becoming more commonplace, marking a “spillover of the war in Gaza.”
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa on Tuesday directed urgent humanitarian aid and shelter for “Palestinian people forcibly displaced” by Israeli forces in the “northern West Bank, particularly in the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams” until “Israeli forces withdraw from the targeted areas.”
CNN’s Abeer Salman and Caitlin Danaher contributed to this report.
