UN accuses Israel of moving Palestinian forces in the West Bank

Na report entitled “Destruction of Palestinian Refugee Camps in the North of the West Bank”, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reports that military, police and other forces deployed in the area killed civilians, destroyed hundreds of homes, damaged roads and other infrastructure, cut off water and electricity supplies and blocked humanitarian access to Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm camps in the north of the West Bank.

The document highlights that Israeli security forces went door-to-door, forcing residents to leave their homes, and it adds that about 52% of the structures in the Jenin field, as well as 48% and 36% of the structures in Nur Shams and Tulkarem, respectively, were destroyed or damaged by October 2025.

“ A few days after the start of the ‘Iron Wall Operation’ [in January 2025], Israeli security forces consolidated their control over the refugee camps of Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem and moved their entire population by force,” says the report, which is based on independent monitoring and documentation of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The UN agency adds that it has received information from some displaced persons indicating that they have received orders that there should be no more refugee camps and that they should “all go to Jordan”.

The report points to a large-scale, systematic and prolonged movement of more than 33,000 Palestinians from these refugee camps during this period — in which the deaths of more than 100 Palestinians, including 21 children, have also been documented — raising concerns about potential crimes against humanity through forced displacement of populations.

The High Commissioner underlines that the use of air raids, armored excavators and controlled explosions to make entire camps uninhabitable, to force the displacement of their residents and to prevent their return, in the absence of an overriding military need, seems to constitute a “collective punishment” and may amount to “ethnic cleansing”.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Austrian Volker Turk, “the way the Iron Wall Operation was conducted suggests that its goal was to expel as many Palestinians as possible and pave the way for more illegal Israeli settlements in yet another violation of international law.”.

“Israel must put an end to its 59-year occupation of Palestinian territory and stop all attempts to move more Palestinian forces and further disrupt the continuity of a future Palestinian state,” Turk says, in a statement released by the organisation after the publication of the report.

Israel “should take steps to comply with its obligations under international law, as clarified by the explicit conclusion of the International Court of Justice (IJC), more than two years ago, that it should end its illegal presence in occupied Palestinian territory as soon as possible,” the representative concludes.