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AS PLANS ANNOUNCED by Donald Trump to “take over” the Gaza Strip and forcibly displace its population have shocked even close allies of the United States and Israel, occupation forces in the West Bank have been driving people from their homes en masse.
Israel is using the ceasefire in Gaza as an opportunity to ramp up violent raids, destroy infrastructure and expel Palestinians in the West Bank, according to one Israeli NGO that spoke to The Journal, while residents of the targeted areas have described being driven from their family homes.
“We got out of our homes without clothes and without shoes. Our lives are very difficult,” said a teacher who fled with her young children.
The United Nations reported on 13 February that over 40,000 Palestinians had been displaced by Israel’s ‘Operation Iron Wall’ in the space of 20 days.
Since the operation began on 21 January, 51 Palestinians, including seven children, have now been killed along with three Israeli soldiers, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The large-scale offensive began just two days after the Gaza ceasefire came into effect.
Following the explosions of three empty buses in central Israel on Thursday, Israel’s prime minister and defence minister have ordered an “intensive” operation in the West Bank, on top of the ongoing assaults.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the refugee camp of Tulkarm on Friday and ordered further raids.
The West Bank, named for its location by the River Jordan, is the largest section of the now broken up Palestine and home to more than three million people. It is territorially isolated from the much smaller Gaza Strip.
Many of the refugee camps in the West Bank resemble small cities. Most were established after Palestinians were expelled from their homes during the Nakba (catastrophe) that led to the formation of Israel in 1948.
“I think they want to erase anything about refugees,” one displaced resident told The Journal.
Last year and 2023 had already seen a huge increase in Israeli army and settler violence in the West Bank, as well as massive expansions of illegal settlements on Palestinian land.
“It’s an all-out war against the Palestinian people,” said Shai Parnes, a spokesperson for the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem.
“We’re seeing a lot of what I would say is the ‘Gazafication’ of the West Bank,” Parnes said.
“Israel is using the ceasefire in Gaza to act more violently in the West Bank, to continue the war on the Palestinian people,” Parnes said, adding that the use of aircraft and airstrikes in the area had been “pretty much unheard of” since the early 2000s.
The Israeli campaign – the longest in the West Bank since the second intifada (uprising) against Israel 25 years ago – is ongoing and Parnes said that it’s difficult to get a full picture of the scale of displacement and destruction there because it’s too dangerous for B’Tselem’s staff to assess properly.
The northern West Bank areas of Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarem, where half a million Palestinians live, have borne the brunt of the Israeli assaults.
“The use of air strikes, armoured bulldozers, controlled detonations, and advanced weaponry by the Israeli Forces has become commonplace – a spillover of the war in Gaza,” said UNRWA, the UN’s main aid agency for Palestinian refugees.
“Repeated and destructive operations have rendered the northern refugee camps uninhabitable, trapping residents in cyclical displacement,” the agency said.
“Jenin Camp stands empty today, evoking memories of the second intifada. This scene stands to be repeated in other camps.”
The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a US think tank, has assessed that the Gaza ceasefire has freed up military resources which are now being deployed in the West Bank.
For Parnes, the Israeli expansion of the war into Palestinian territory beyond Gaza aligns with the government’s long-held goal of annexing the entire territory and expelling its inhabitants, it’s just that now politicians are saying it out loud.
“These people have a vision,” he said. “They do have a plan and are starting to carry it out.”
Israeli rhetoric is now “more out in the open, more brutal, more violent”, he said.
In January, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotricth, who maintains that the West Bank is part of “greater Israel” and is himself an illegal settler, said that fighting armed groups in the area had been added to Israel’s “war goals”, an expansion beyond Gaza and Lebanon.
“After Gaza and Lebanon, today, with God’s help, we have begun to change the security concept in Judea and Samaria and in the campaign to eradicate terrorism in the region,” he said, using the biblical term some Israelis give to the West Bank.
Amnesty International’s Hussein Baoumi said: “What we are seeing right now in the West Bank is an acceleration of a process which has been happening recently.”
Baoumi said that what is happening now should be seen in the context of Israel’s standing in the international arena, particularly in the West.
“Europe and the US have to a large degree accepted that Israel can do what it wants with absolute impunity.”
Some of those forced to flee their homes have told The Journal about entire neighbourhoods emptying, houses being demolished and friends being killed.
“I am not fine. I have been expelled from my house,” said Azza, a teacher who has left her home in Tulkarm and fled to a nearby village with her young children.
“We got out of our homes without clothes and without shoes. Our lives are very difficult,” she said.
Azza spoke to The Journal in September last year when she was trapped inside her house with her terrified children, as gunfire rang out around them, when violence in the West Bank was already surging.
One resident of the Nour Shams camp, a university student named Sara, said she had been displaced five times before ending up in the village of Anabta.
She has already lost a friend during the Israeli attacks, a fellow student, 21-year-old Rahaf Alashqar.
Rahaf was killed on 9 February by an explosion when she opened her front in Nour Shams, which Sara said she had done in order to protect her father – as women are usually safer than men when homes are raided.
Rahaf’s father survived and Sara said he is doing okay because “he’s now used to it”, having already lost loved ones.
On the same day that Rahaf was killed, a 23-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant was shot dead by Israeli soldiers, also in the Nour Shams camp.
Rahaf Al-Ashqar, a young woman from Nur Shams Camp, was killed yesterday when Israeli forces placed a bomb at her home’s entrance without warning. When she opened the door, the bomb exploded.
— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) February 10, 2025
She is yet another Palestinian victim. Let the world know her story. pic.twitter.com/SJGoj0qtfo
Sara said she and her family fled their home on the day the Israeli forces began invading the nearby refugee camp of Tulkarm, meaning she was not directly forced from her house like many others.
“We were really scared,” she said.
She described how difficult it has been to live in a single apartment in Anabta alongside 26 other relatives, including her autistic younger brother. She is looking forward to graduating from university this year and finding a job, because “being a student feels like being a burden to your family”.
Even still, she counts herself and her family lucky, because they avoided ending up in the centres housing displaced people.
Sara’s father went back to check on their home on Thursday to find it still standing, but also evidence that Israeli soldiers had been staying there.
A hole had been broken through the roof for a sniper.
“They were living there, eating our food,” Sara said, adding that an antique map of Palestine had been ripped from its frame.
“It was in the toilet.”
All the same, Sara said it was good news to hear that the house had not been completely destroyed, which could not be said for many of her relatives’ homes.
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