Jenin and Tulkarm Refugees Fear Permanent Displacement – Again

Zena Al Tahhan 

The Electronic Intifada 

5 February 2026

A bulldozer demolishing homes with men watching

An Israeli military bulldozer demolishes a building in the Nur Shams refugee camp, east of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, on 31 December 2025.  Nidal EshtayehXinhua

Tens of thousands of Palestinians in the northern occupied West Bank are marking one year since their forcible expulsion from their homes in the refugee camps of Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin.

The camps remain under military siege, and Israeli forces are still stationed inside.

When the assault on Jenin and Tulkarm began in January 2025, Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said his troops would remain in the camps until the end of the year. Within weeks, some 40,000 people were driven from their homes, many at gunpoint – described as the largest mass expulsion since 1967.

As residents enter their second year of displacement – with no end to the operation in sight – grave legal, political and moral questions are being posed.

At the heart of this crisis is the severe and direct threat to the protected legal status of Palestine refugees, who, under United Nations Resolution 194, have a right to return to their original lands from which they were violently expelled during the creation of Israel as a settler-colonial state in 1948.

The Palestine refugee issue, the longest unresolved refugee crisis in the world, has now entered a new and dangerous phase, as the same families undergo displacement for a second time in 77 years in the West Bank as in Gaza.

The assault, which rights groups say constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity, has gone far beyond displacement. Thousands of homes have been systematically demolished, entire neighborhoods flattened and civilian infrastructure destroyed.

Israeli occupation authorities have said that the rebuilding of demolished residential buildings will not be permitted, according to the Haifa-based Adalah rights group, which has represented residents in appeals against the demolition of their homes. This suggests a deliberate effort to permanently erase refugee camps as political and physical spaces and ensures that many refugees will have nothing to return to, even if the military assault were to end.

Alongside the military operations, the Israeli government is taking concrete steps to restrict and end the role of the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, an organization that was created in the aftermath of Israel’s establishment and consequent refugee crisis.

“What’s happening in the northern part of the West Bank is nothing but destruction of the three refugee camps in an Israeli effort to destroy not only UNRWA, but the whole right of Palestinian refugees to return to their original lands based on UN resolutions,” Palestinian political leader Mustafa Barghouti told The Electronic Intifada.

“Israel thinks that if they destroy a camp, they will destroy the right of return,” he continued. “Palestinian refugees, however, will never give up their right of return, no matter what happens.”

Over the past year, these refugee camps have been turned into ghost towns, devoid of life. Expelled residents stand on the surrounding hilltops, as close as they are allowed to get, watching Israeli soldiers occupy their camps, sleep in their homes and tear down their memories right before their eyes.

As displacement deepens and the world looks away, the question is no longer whether this crisis is temporary but whether the world will allow the permanent erasure of the protected status of Palestinian refugeehood by force.

“Existential issue”

Israel has taken a series of legal, administrative and operational steps that have significantly restricted UNRWA’s ability to operate over the past several years. These include legislation passed in late 2024 by the Israeli parliament, prohibiting UNRWA from operating inside Israel.

In January 2026, Israeli forces demolished part of UNRWA’s offices and facilities in occupied East Jerusalem. They also cut electricity to the agency’s facilities in the Qalandia refugee camp in Kufr Aqab and are threatening to shut down the camp’s training center, which offers vocational training to hundreds of young Palestinian students.

While the ban on UNRWA may not formally ban the agency’s activity in the West Bank and Gaza, it forbids any Israeli official contact with the agency and annuls agreements and arrangements that previously facilitated its work – including issuing visas to foreign employees. These measures have disrupted service delivery in education, healthcare and humanitarian assistance both in occupied Gaza and the West Bank.

For over a decade, UNRWA has functioned despite chronic underfunding. With the United States – historically the agency’s largest single donor – having intermittently suspended funding to UNRWA in recent years, the agency has reported budget shortfalls and service reductions affecting millions of registered Palestinian refugees.

“Palestinian refugee camps fall under the direct administrative responsibility of UNRWA,” Bashir Mataheen, the spokesperson for the Jenin city municipality, told The Electronic Intifada. “Today, UNRWA stands at a very dangerous crossroads, with clear service reductions and the threat of complete closure.”

This, he said, pointing to the besieged Jenin refugee camp behind him, is an “existential issue” for camp residents.

“The people of Jenin camp were displaced in 1948, and this is the second displacement, repeated in 2025. This is extremely dangerous and threatens their entire future.”

And, Mataheen warned, forcing UNRWA out or closed would have implications beyond the humanitarian dimension.

“It calls into question the political standing of these families and the future of their right of return. Once the international body that formally protects their refugee status is gone, that right is left without a clear framework or guarantee. There will be a serious political vacuum and crisis.”

On 21 December 2025, Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA commissioner-general said on his official X account that the “coordinated campaign to dismantle UNRWA has reached unseen levels” over the past two years.

“One major myth is that UNRWA maintains Palestine Refugees in a refugee limbo. The truth is that, wherever they are, refugees remain refugees in the absence of just and lasting political solutions to their plight,” he wrote.

“Dismantling UNRWA will not end the refugee status of Palestinians in the absence of a political solution.”

Political status

Israel launched its assault on the northern occupied West Bank on 21 January 2025, just two days after a second, ultimately doomed, ceasefire was announced in the still ongoing genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip. The timing underscored a shift in military focus rather than a de-escalation, and Israeli forces rapidly escalated its assaults across the West Bank.

The offensive, which started almost exactly a year ago, concentrated on the cities of Jenin and Tulkarm, where occupation forces carried out sustained raids, airstrikes and ground incursions, killing dozens of Palestinians and wounding many others. The assault involved the deployment of hundreds of ground troops, including special forces and snipers, alongside armed drones, surveillance aircraft, armored vehicles and tanks.

Residential neighborhoods and refugee camps were placed under siege, with widespread destruction of homes, roads and civilian infrastructure, marking the longest military assault in the area since the second intifada in the 2000s.

According to satellite images obtained by the UN, by May 2025 – less than six months after the start of the assault – some 43 percent of Jenin refugee camp was destroyed, as well as 35 percent of Nur Shams camp and 14 percent of Tulkarm camp.

“Not a single building in the Jenin refugee camp escaped damage. Preliminary statistics indicate that over 1,500 homes in the camp were fully destroyed,” Mataheen said.

“The losses to infrastructure, including electricity, water, sewage systems and road networks in the camp alone – has exceeded $320 million,” he continued.

“For residents, this is not merely a humanitarian and refugee crisis,” said Mataheen. “It is about the possible erasure of the political status they have maintained for close to eight decades.”

Zena Al Tahhan is an independent writer and TV reporter based in occupied Jerusalem.