Nazme Jowhar heard a drone whirring outside his home in the Jenin refugee camp. Moments later the drone, fitted with a loudspeaker, was inside his house, projecting a voice ordering the Palestinian man to leave.
“I said I wanted some time to gather clothes and my sheep but the voice said I had to leave immediately.” Along with the homes of his eight brothers, Jowhar’s house has since burned down during the Israeli military operation in the camp, which began in January.
According to the UN, the Israeli campaign has displaced more than 40,000 people living in refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Far’a – the biggest displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the 1967 war.
“All our savings are gone,” says Jowhar (53). “Each one of us [brothers] has between six and seven children. All of them have been out of school for the last four months.”
Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz has called the West Bank camps “nests of terror” and imposed blockades preventing the return of tens of thousands of Palestinian residents, predominantly from families displaced by the Nakba in 1948 when the state of Israel was formed.
When The Irish Times drove around the entrances to Jenin camp, each one was blocked by a large mound of earth or had a yellow barrier newly installed by the Israeli military. Locals said anyone who approached the entrances risked being beaten or shot at.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that “due to the intensity of the ongoing operational activity, residents who left combat zones are not currently permitted to return, except for limited, co-ordinated entries to retrieve belongings.”
For nearly four months Jowhar’s family has lived in temporary accommodation. He spoke with The Irish Times after moving from a school-turned-shelter to university accommodation on the outskirts of Jenin.
“I have injured children and children who were arrested,” says Jowhar, who worked as a vegetable grocer in Jenin. “My future is gone and the future of my children. I am 53 years old. When am I going to rest?”
Another displaced resident, Ibrahim Natour, says the Israeli military has denied families from Jenin camp permission to bury deceased relatives in the camp. They are buried in nearby villages.
Some 600 people live in the crowded building, with an average of four to five people per room. In a small single room, Rahma Natour (79) is wearing the dress she had on when forced to leave her three-storey home in Jenin camp. Her grandson, Karim, is in her room with her.
“My son needed some intimacy with his wife, so I brought the children here,” she says. “For four months, they didn’t have any sort of intimacy because she was staying with her family, and he was staying with his family.”
Natour shows a video taken by a Palestinian woman who was allowed to enter the camp briefly during Ramadan. “This is my room in the camp – it’s all destroyed,” she says. “All our birth certificates, all our documents, are inside the house.”
The house has a large red star sprayed on it, marking it for demolition. The displacement reminds Natour of her childhood, when her family lived in tents after fleeing their home in Sindiyana near Haifa in modern-day Israel during the Nakba. “Now we return to the same.”
The Popular Committee of Jenin Camp is paying the rent for the university building and has received donations from Palestinian businessmen, including many Palestinian citizens of Israel.
A group of the displaced residents has formed a committee to oversee the running of the building and collects money to pay for electricity and water.
“The Palestinian Authority (PA) is not helping one bit,” says Ibrahim Natour, who claims that camps aligned with Fatah, the party which dominates the authority, are receiving more aid than camps such as Nur Shams and Jenin, which are associated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Kamal Abu Rub, the PA-appointed governor for Jenin, denies the allegation and says the camp committees have received about €25,000 each from the authority to deal with the displacement crisis.
The semi-autonomous authority governs part of the West Bank but in recent years has lost much of its power in Jenin where it is viewed as corrupt and a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation.
The authority’s own forces were involved in a weeks-long siege of Jenin at the end of 2024. In an effort to assert control, it set up checkpoints around the city and refugee camp and fought with militants, leaving dozens dead.
“PA employees from the camp who tried to help were dismissed and some of them are in PA jail,” says camp resident Mohammad Awaad. “They were helping the camp by going to the media and talking about the tragedy of the siege.”
Abu Rub denied that PA security members were dismissed because they spoke to the media but said it is possible that some brigadiers who were recently retired were from Jenin camp.
Residents fear that only about a third of their number will be allowed to return to what remains of Jenin camp. New surveillance cameras and towers are being installed while whole residential blocks have been demolished to create a network of roads in the camp which the IDF says is part of a plan to accommodate military vehicles. The IDF said this plan has been reviewed and approved by the Israeli high court of justice.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, criticised the demolitions as “collective punishment, categorically prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention”.
“By targeting civilian homes absent of immediate military necessity, the actions of the Israeli Security Forces bring about more than just physical destruction: they inflict lasting trauma and psychological harm,” he said.
“Whilst the erasure of buildings or even entire camps will not eradicate the status of Palestine Refugees it will prolong the occupation and obstruct the path to a just solution.”
Israeli vehicles have reportedly been excavating part of the camp in Jenin which is referenced in documents dating from the 12th century BC. “They say there are antiquities underneath,” says Jowhar.
The IDF did not respond to a request for comment but the recovery of archaeological sites has previously led to the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank.
The Israeli cultural rights NGO Emek Shaveh says that such archaeological sites have been used “to strengthen the connection of the Jewish people to this land, and to undermine the Palestinian heritage and narrative alongside the physical takeover of lands.”
