'Israel's' West Bank aggression triggers unprecedented displacement
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More than 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced from their homes amid intensified Israeli operations in the northern sections of the West Bank.
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Palestinians who fled the Israeli military operation in the Nur Shams refugee camp arrive at a temporary shelter for displaced people in the West Bank town of Anabta, near Tulkarm, on Monday, February 10, 2025. (AP)
A report by The Associated Press highlighted the struggle Palestinians are going through as Israel intensifies its assault on the West Bank, destroying homes and forcibly displacing civilians from their homes.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the West Bank following "Israel's" aggression targeting the northern sector of the territory, leading to the largest wave of displacement in the territory since 1967.
"This is our Nakba," said Abed Sabbagh, cited by AP, who fled the Nur Shams camp in his car with his 7 children on February 9, invoking the memory of Al-Nakba, or The Catastrophe, when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their cities by Zionist Forces.
More than 40,000 Palestinians forced to flee
"This is unprecedented. When you add to this the destruction of infrastructure, we’re reaching a point where the camps are becoming uninhabitable," the director of West Bank affairs in UNRWA told The Associated Press.
Experts are saying that the Israeli occupation forces' tactics are the same as the ones deployed in Gaza, as "Israel's" far-right raises its calls for the annexation of the West Bank, "The idea of ‘cleansing’ the land of Palestinians is more popular today than ever before," Yagil Levy, the head of the Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations at Britain’s Open University told AP.
A New York Times report stated that tens of thousands of Palestinians were forced to seek refuge in wedding venues, schools, relatives and friends' homes, and mosques, triggering fears the assault is paving the way to permanent forced displacement.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have fled from their homes, according to UNRWA, as "Israel" pushes its operations deeper than ever in the West Bank, targeting Tulkarm, Jenin, the Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps, with some of them being ordered to leave their houses by the Israeli Occupation Forces, rather than leaving out of fear.
"I was sobbing, asking them, ‘Why do you want me to leave my house?’ My baby is upstairs, just let me get my baby please,’" Ayat Abdullah, 30, said according to the Associated Press, "They gave us seven minutes. I brought my children, thank God. Nothing else." she added.
Abdullah had to walk 10 kilometers in the dark while clutching her children in fear of Israeli snipers targeting them like they had before with a pregnant Palestinian woman.
Israeli soldiers do everything to push Palestinians out
Ahmad Sobuh from the Far'a refugee camp said, "They are doing everything they can to push us out," referring to the Israeli army who forced him to leave despite his insistence after Israeli forces found security cameras and an object "resembling a weapon" which was a water pipe belonging to his nephew.
The Israeli army then notified him that they must detonate the second floor of the building. The detonation left Ahmad's nephew's room exposed to the outside elements and damaged much of the house, forcing them to flee.
Palestinians who returned to their homes found them vandalized and left in a complete state of chaos, Doha Abu Dgheish told AP, explaining that they found toilets filled with excrement, Qurans defaced with graphic images all over their pages, and doors were blown off their hinges with explosives despite being unlocked.
Almost two dozen Palestinians echoed this testimony, saying that Israeli troops took over civilian homes to use them as dormitories, outposts, and storage rooms. The Israeli military used its recurring excuse of Resistance fighters embedding themselves in civilian homes as an excuse, saying that the IOF were forced to operate from within civilian buildings as a result.
