A weekslong Israeli military operation across several West Bank cities has displaced roughly 40,000 Palestinians from their homes, in what historians and researchers say is the biggest displacement of civilians in the territory since the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.
Israeli campaigns against armed Palestinian groups in three parts of the northern West Bank have forced thousands of residents to shelter with friends and relatives, or camp in wedding halls, schools, mosques, municipal buildings and even a farm shed.
The Israeli military says the operation is solely an attempt to stifle rising militancy in Jenin, Tulkarem and near Tubas, targeting gunmen who they say have carried out or are planning terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. Palestinians fear it is a veiled attempt to permanently displace Palestinians from their homes and exert greater control over areas administered by the Palestinian Authority, a semiautonomous body that has also battled the militants in recent months.
Many of the displaced are the descendants of refugees who were expelled or fled from their homes during the wars surrounding the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, a period known in Arabic as the Nakba. The renewed displacement, even if temporary, raises painful memories of the central trauma in Palestinian history.
While roughly 3,000 have returned home, most remain homeless after more than three weeks — a bigger displacement than during a similar Israeli campaign in the West Bank in 2002, according to two Palestinian and two Israeli experts on the history of the West Bank. That year, troops raided several cities at the height of a Palestinian uprising, known as the second intifada, which began with protests before leading to a surge in Palestinian attacks on civilians in Israel.
The current numbers also dwarf the displacement during intra-Palestinian clashes earlier this year, when up to 1,000 residents of Jenin left their homes, according to a residents’ leadership council there.
As in 2002, some of those displaced during this new campaign will have no home to return to. The Israeli military has demolished scores of buildings in the areas it has invaded, ripping up roads, water pipes and power lines to destroy what it says are booby traps set by militants.
The United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said that water and sanitation systems had been destroyed in four dense urban neighborhoods, known as refugee camps because they house people displaced in 1948 and their descendants. It added that some water infrastructure had been contaminated with sewage.
“We’ve reached a point where the refugee camps are out of order,” said Hakeem Abu Safiye, who oversees emergency services in Tulkarem camp. “They are uninhabitable. Even if the army pulls out, we are not sure what will be left to repair.”
The full scale of the damage is unclear because the military is still operating in most of the areas it has invaded, but the United Nations has already recorded severe damage to more than 150 homes in Jenin. By early February, the Israeli military had acknowledged blowing up at least 23 buildings, but it has declined to confirm the latest number of demolished structures.
“The soldiers are taking over one area after another, destroying homes, infrastructure and roads,” said Ramy Abu Siriye, 53, a barber forced to flee his home in Tulkarem on Jan. 27, the first day of the Israeli operation there.
“The Israelis have two objectives — first, to push refugees from the northern West Bank toward the central areas, aiming to erase the refugee camps entirely,” Mr. Abu Siriye said. “The second goal is to eliminate resistance and weaken the Palestinian Authority’s ability to govern,” Mr. Abu Siriye added.
A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said the military’s goal was to root out militant groups, including Hamas, that launch terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.
“The purpose of the operations is to prevent terror from places a few kilometers from Jewish communities and to prevent a repeat of Oct. 7,” Colonel Shoshani said, referring to the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023 that killed up to 1,200 people and led to the abduction of some 250 hostages.
Colonel Shoshani acknowledged that in some cases people had been ordered to leave specific buildings close to what he said were militant hideouts. But more generally, Colonel Shoshani denied any wider policy of “forced evacuation or displacement of Palestinians,” he said. “If people want to move around, they are obviously allowed to,” he added. Roughly 3,000 people have been able to return to al-Faraa camp, near Tubas.
But displaced Palestinians said that in both Jenin and Tulkarem they were instructed to leave by soldiers who used loudspeakers to make general evacuation orders.
“We had to leave the camp — the army threatened to shoot at us,” said Aws Khader, 29, a supermarket owner who fled Tulkarem on Jan. 27. “They used megaphones, ordering people to leave or be shot,” Mr. Khader added.
Asked for comment on this and similar incidents, the military repeated in a statement that no evacuation orders had been issued, but that all those who wished to leave had been provided with safe passage. The statement said that troops operated in Mr. Khader’s neighborhood because they had “uncovered terror infrastructure and weapons that terrorists had hidden in a bookstore.”
Palestinians dismiss the military’s explanations, citing calls by key ministers in Israel’s far-right government to encourage the flight of Palestinians from the West Bank, destroy the Palestinian Authority and annex the territory.
Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 from Jordan, expelling Palestinians from several villages close to Israel and prompting the flight of hundreds of thousands of others into Jordan. Since then, Israel has gradually entrenched its control, building hundreds of settlements, often on private Palestinian land, for hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians, and building a two-tier legal structure that critics have described as an apartheid system. Israel strongly denies the charge.
Efforts to cement Israeli control over the territory accelerated after the current Israeli government entered office in 2022.
Bezalel Smotrich, a settler leader turned finance minister, was given authority over part of an influential military unit that controls Palestinian building projects in most of the territory.
His empowerment heightened suspicions about the government’s intentions: Mr. Smotrich published a lengthy plan in 2017 that proposed permanent Israeli control of the territory. Under the plan, Palestinians would be denied voting rights, at least initially, and those who did not accept Israeli control would be paid to emigrate, or killed if they resorted to violence.
The government has also placed growing restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank; banned UNRWA, the United Nations agency that cares for Palestinian refugees and their descendants; and done little to curb efforts by far-right Israeli activists to force thousands of Palestinian herders from remote but strategic areas of the territory.
“What makes this moment unprecedented is not only the scale of the displacement but also the accompanying discourse, which increasingly normalizes the idea of permanent forced displacement,” said Maha Nassar, a Palestinian American historian at the University of Arizona.
“This represents a significant escalation in the longstanding conflict, one that threatens to fundamentally alter the political and demographic landscape of the region,” she added.
Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting from Jerusalem.