• On 21 January, two days after the ceasefire in Gaza, Israel launched a military campaign in the West Bank.
• The refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams were struck by air and ground attacks.
• There are already 40,000 displaced people, and Israeli authorities have said they will not be allowed to return to their homes.

For over a month, the Israeli army has been conducting a violent military campaign in the West Bank, echoing what was done in recent months in the Gaza Strip. On 21 January, two days after the start of the ceasefire in Gaza and one day after Donald Trump's inauguration at the White House, Israel launched bombing raids and ground operations in the Jenin area, focusing on the refugee camp where approximately 23,000 people live. The attacks then spread to the refugee camps of Tulkarem and Nur Shams. The operation was described as "counter-terrorism", an alibi Israel frequently uses to justify its military aggressions in a colonial context, and has already caused the deaths of dozens of people and the displacement of a further 40,000 — a figure not seen since the Six-Day War of 1967.

In recent days, Israeli authorities sent tanks into the territory — something that had not happened since 2002 — stating that they will remain there for at least a year and that the displaced Palestinian population will not be permitted to return. Israel's objective is to occupy the territory, empty it of its local population and facilitate the establishment of new settlements.

The "Iron Wall" operation in the West Bank

On 21 January, Israeli military forces launched a sweeping and violent military operation, dubbed "Iron Wall", in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Soldiers, police officers and intelligence agents carried out a series of raids, accompanied by air strikes. Numerous homes and civilian infrastructure, including a hospital, were damaged or set on fire, while thousands of people were forced to flee.

The Jenin refugee camp, which housed approximately 23,000 people, had already been the target of Israeli military operations in the past under "counter-terrorism" pretexts — a formula Israel uses to justify virtually all of its campaigns against Palestinian territories, including the genocide in Gaza. Since 7 October 2023, the start of the offensive on Gaza, Israel has carried out several attacks in the West Bank that have killed over 800 people, often minors.

In recent months, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the non-occupied part of the West Bank, had also launched several operations in the Jenin refugee camp, arresting some militants linked to Islamic Jihad and killing others, with clashes between Palestinian factions not seen for quite some time. On 21 January, with the launch of Operation "Iron Wall", Israel dramatically escalated the level of confrontation.

The date chosen was no coincidence. The world's eyes were focused elsewhere, because two days earlier the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip had begun, reached after more than 15 months of Israeli attacks, at least 50,000 deaths and a territory effectively razed to the ground. Furthermore, the day before the attacks on Jenin began, Donald Trump had been inaugurated in the United States — already described as the most pro-Israel president in American history — who, among his first executive orders, removed the sanctions imposed by his predecessor Joe Biden on certain Israeli settlers.

The return of Israeli tanks

The Israeli military campaign in the West Bank that began on 21 January did not stop in the weeks that followed — on the contrary, it expanded to other refugee camps.

Attacks on the Jenin camp continued, and in late February, for the first time in 20 years, three tanks were deployed to the area. In the meantime, the camps of Tulkarem and Nur Shams were also struck. Israeli attacks destroyed homes and civilian infrastructure, including sewage networks and water pipes, with the aim of rendering the refugee camps uninhabitable and preventing the return of the displaced population. In just over a month, 40,000 people were forced to leave their homes in the refugee camps — a figure not reached since the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and forced thousands of people to flee.

Since late January, Israeli forces have killed over 60 people across the three refugee camps, and according to the UN, these were unarmed individuals who posed no threat whatsoever. Dozens more people have been arrested and placed in administrative detention — a form of imprisonment contrary to international law that Israel uses against the Palestinian population, which involves no formal charges or trial. Israeli forces also halted the activities of UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, in the camps. As denounced by the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch, the ongoing offensive in the West Bank is part of the crimes against humanity that Israel has been committing for decades in Palestinian territories, including apartheid and persecution.

Israeli colonialism

Israel Katz, the Israeli Defence Minister, stated that the Israeli presence in the Jenin refugee camp will last at least a year. And that the 40,000 people displaced from the three refugee camps will not be allowed to return.

The Israeli campaign of destruction of the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps and the emptying of their populations with no right of return echoes, in many respects — albeit in a more localised form — the most dramatic chapters in the history of Israeli violence against the Palestinian people. The Nakba of 1948, when the Israeli army forcibly emptied dozens of Arab villages, killing or deporting those who refused to leave, ultimately creating 700,000 refugees who to this day have never been able to return to their lands. The Six-Day War of 1967, through which Israel occupied, among other territories, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, forcing some 300,000 Palestinians to flee. And also, coming to the present day, Israel's more than 15-month military offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has razed entire cities to the ground, killed at least 50,000 people and left hundreds of thousands with no home to return to.

Under the justification of counter-terrorism operations, several analysts believe Israel is acting to annex and control new portions of West Bank territory, so as to expand its settlements. As early as January, the Israeli government announced the construction of over 2,000 illegal housing units, while a plan to build a further 1,170 housing units is now under discussion. According to the association Peacenow, 2025 will be a record year for Israeli settlements in the West Bank, with an average of 1,800 housing units built per month.