Israeli Soldiers Forced Leila E. From Jenin Refugee Camp, Human Rights Watch Says

Human Rights Watch says an Israeli soldier told Leila E., a 54-year-old Palestinian refugee, “You no longer have a home here. You must leave.” before forcing her to leave her home in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank exactly a year ago.

Human Rights Watch links that episode to Israel’s ‘Iron Wall’ operation, launched on January 21, 2025, two days after the announcement of a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, and says the operation forced about 32,000 people to leave three camps where they lived.

Agence Media Palestine

The report says one year later Leila and other residents of those camps still cannot return home and that it is the largest displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank since 1967.

Human Rights Watch adds that Israeli soldiers fired at people trying to reach their homes, allowing only a few of them to recover their belongings, and says Israel then razed, expanded, and cleared entire sections of the camps to create widened military access routes off limits to the local population.

In a separate account, Asharq Al-Awsat English reports Palestinian health officials said Israeli forces killed 34-year-old Nour al-Din Kamal Hassan Fayyad on the outskirts of the Jenin refugee camp, with the Palestinian Red Crescent saying its teams received a man “with no signs of breathing or pulse” after a live bullet wound to the thigh.

Mondoweiss describes how Iman Jahjouh, a 33-year-old widow in the Qalandia refugee camp just outside of Ramallah, was told by soldiers “pack your things and go to a European country. This land is ours,” as her daughters, aged eight and ten, were awake during an incursion last Tuesday.

Mondoweiss says the threat has become part of a pattern residents and analysts connect to Israel’s expanding settlement ambitions around the old Qalandia airport, and it states that since January 2025 Israeli forces launched “Operation Iron Wall” and forcibly displaced 40,000 Palestinian refugees over roughly three weeks.

Al Jazeera

The UN News account says the UN Human Rights Office warned that the displacement of more than 36,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank constitutes “a massive expulsion of Palestinians on an unprecedented scale,” and it says the displacements coincide with mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.

UN News reports OHCHR concluded the displacements “appear to indicate a concerted Israeli policy of mass forcible transfer,” raising concerns about ethnic cleansing.

In the same UN News report, Volker Türk is quoted calling on Israel “to allow the return of displaced Palestinians and to end all practices of land confiscation, forced expulsions and home demolitions.”

France Palestine Solidarité says that by late December Israeli bulldozers had razed 25 buildings in Nur Shams camp, including about 100 housing units, and it reports that local committees submitted urgent petitions to the Israeli High Court which rejected them.

“In Pictures Millions of Palestinians are marking the 78th anniversary of the Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe” – a term that refers to the mass expulsion and flight of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes during the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel”

Al Jazeera

The same report says Israel began paving broad roads inside the camps, and it quotes Faisal Salama, head of the Tulkarem Camp Popular Committee, saying “Once you open these roads, you change everything,” and “You transform the camp, which was a protected civilian space, into open ground under military control.”

RFI reports that since February nearly 32,000 Palestinians from the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nour Shams have been forcibly displaced, and it describes how women face “double punishment” when losing a roof also means losing privacy and the space for care and daily life.

RFI includes testimony from Raghad Lafi, 25, saying “Here, there is no privacy. No rest. We don't feel well protected either,” and it quotes Nehaya al Jundi, head of the Popular Committee for Nour Shams refugee camp services, saying “I have reached the point where, due to lack of privacy, I am afraid to wash myself.”

In the Human Rights Watch report, it warns that when legal evacuation conditions are not met, “so-called evacuations constitute a violation of international law,” and it says such forcible displacement could very likely be classified as a war crime of forcible displacement.