'Entire generations destroyed': Israel's war on Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank

Tulkarem, occupied West Bank - Ayman Ghanayem was forced out of his home at gunpoint, blindfolded, and taken hostage by soldiers during Israel’s recent large-scale military operations across the occupied West Bank. 

In the northern city of Tulkarem, the 51-year-old was detained for reasons unknown to him, along with his son and more than 20 of his male relatives and neighbours.

The men were taken to the Nitzanei Oz military checkpoint and left in the sun for over seven hours with their eyes blindfolded and many of them shackled.

“It was horrible. They kept swearing at us and humiliating us,” Ghanayem told The New Arab from his small supermarket in the Nur Shams refugee camp. “They swore at our sisters, mothers and brothers, using very foul language.”

On 28 August, thousands of Israeli soldiers launched a simultaneous attack on a number of Palestinian cities and refugee camps in the northern West Bank, namely Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas.

The operations, which were the largest in over two decades, came from the air and ground, and included armoured bulldozers, drone missile strikes, anti-tank grenades, and sniper fire. Israeli soldiers killed 39 Palestinians in the span of 10 days, including eight children and two elderly men. More than 150 others were wounded, and over 150 others arrested.

The attacks in the occupied West Bank also come in parallel with Israel’s ongoing war in the besieged Gaza Strip, in which over 40,000 Palestinians, including over 16,000 children, have been killed.

UN rights experts and academics say Israel has committed acts of genocide during the war.

During the assault on the Nur Shams refugee camp, the Israeli army assassinated the well-known leader of the Tulkarem Bridages, 26-year-old Mohammad Jaber, also known by his nickname, ‘Abu Shujaa’, in a drone missile strike.

When Ghanayem was taken to the Nitzanei Oz the checkpoint, he said he saw three dead bodies wrapped in silver foil. “One of the soldiers said: ‘Here is your beloved ‘Abu Shujaa’. We got rid of him for you so you can live in dignity,” recalled Ghanayem.

“We performed Wudu’ (Ablution) using the sand around us, and we prayed for his soul,” the father-of-three said.

Israel's multi-front assault

Hundreds of Palestinian homes and stores were destroyed by the Israeli army during the 10-day assault. Thousands of Palestinians were also forcibly displaced from their homes, including those who fled for safety and others who were ordered to leave under the threat of lethal violence. Some sought shelter in hospitals and others went to relatives’ homes outside the camps.

“About 40 occupation soldiers burst into my home in a very barbaric way, with military dogs,” recalled Ghanayem of the moment he was arrested. “They wrecked everything in sight including our cabinets and furniture.”

Soldiers turned Ghanayem’s home “into a military base in which to gather women and children who were forced out of their homes in the camp and whose husbands were taken,” he added.

Other buildings in the camp were either turned into bases for holding dozens of male detainees, or as observation points for soldiers and places from which to station snipers.

Nabil Abu Shu’leh, a 47-year-old resident of the Nur Shams refugee camp, was walking home on Friday morning after a long journey on mountains of rubble and meters-deep holes in the ground in search of bread for his family.

“The situation is only going from bad to worse,” Abu Shu’leh told The New Arab.

“In the past they [Israeli soldiers] would evacuate the women and children, now they use them as human shields. They knowingly bulldozed homes with families and children inside, and they set homes on fire before leaving them,” he described.

The father-of-five remained at home with his family during the Israeli army’s two-day siege on the Nur Shams camp. “The children are horrified, and the men were badly beaten and abused by soldiers,” said Abu Shu’leh.

While he knows that Israel is ultimately responsible for the violence perpetrated against Palestinians, Abu Shu’leh said his message is to “those who say we [Palestinians] have a state and a president”.

“What is our president doing? He has done completely nothing. What is governor of Jenin doing? The civil defence teams couldn’t even get into the camp to put out the fires because they had no security coordination (permission) from the army,” he continued.

'Ruined entire generations'

Palestinian cities and refugee camps in the northern occupied West Bank have witnessed a re-emergence of limited armed resistance since 2021. Jenin was the spark that lit the fire before the phenomenon quickly spread to other cities including Nablus, Tulkarem, Tubas and Qalqilya, among others.

The development saw young men - the majority in their early 20s - take up arms and craft improvised explosives in order to defend their refugee camps against decades-long deadly raids by one of the world’s strongest armies.  

Since then, Israel has intensified its crackdown on these areas, targeting the overall infrastructure of the camps and affecting tens of thousands of civilians. During the most recent assault, Israeli forces laid siege to the camps and hospitals as they destroyed the road, water, and sewage networks, as well as electricity lines, leaving residents without the most basic necessities.

Just next door to Nur Shams is the Tulkarem refugee camp. The two camps are collectively home to more than 40,000 Palestinian refugees who were forcibly displaced by Zionist militias from their homes in Haifa, Jaffa, and Caesarea between 1947 and 1948 to create the state of Israel.

Majed Ahmad De’bas is a father of five. He and his family are originally from the village of Umm Khaled, just 15 kilometres west of Tulkarem. It is one of the hundreds of Palestinian villages that were ethnically cleansed at the time.

“They have ruined entire generations. My children won’t be starting school this week like all the other kids,” he told The New Arab.

During the latest assault, Israeli forces destroyed his small store in the camp for the fifth time since the war on Gaza began.

Palestinian refugees, says De’bas, are “the most targeted segment of the population, and suffer the most at the hands of Israel”.

Like many of the residents in the camp, he believes one of Israel’s goals is to end the issue of 1948 refugees and their right to return to their homes.

“As long as we are refugees, they will target us.”

Zena Tahhan is a freelance journalist based in the occupied Palestinian Territories.

Follow her on X: @zenatahhan