JENIN, West Bank — When Israeli snipers took positions in her neighborhood, Haleemeh Zawaydeh knew her family needed to leave quickly. As the snipers’ gunfire rang out, the 63-year-old matriarch said there was no time to pack as she and 14 other family members fled on foot.
The invasion of Jenin was faster than past Israeli assaults, she said. And, now, like some 37,000 other Palestinians the U.N. estimates have been driven out by a month-old offensive against militant groups in the occupied West Bank, Zawaydeh and her family are waiting to return to the place they’ve long called home.
But it’s unclear if Israel will let them. Israel’s assault has mostly emptied four refugee camps — sites that originated to house Palestinians driven from homes in the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and have since grown into densely built up towns or neighborhoods.
Across the four camps, troops have ripped up roads and destroyed buildings, infrastructure, and water and electricity lines. The Israeli defense minister said Monday that troops were preparing to stay for a year and would prevent Palestinians from returning.
That leaves thousands who hail from among the poorest areas of the West Bank in dire straits as many are forced to rent temporary housing in neighboring villages. OCHA, the U.N.’s humanitarian agency, said there is an “urgent need for cash assistance” for 4,000 families to meet rent needs.
Zawaydeh said she was safe now at her shelter outside Jenin, but not at ease. “I was born and raised in the camp, and now I have grown up and I still live in the camp,” she said. “There is no place that can replace the camp.”
The displacement is the biggest since the 1967 war
Many Palestinians displaced from their West Bank homes are renting temporary housing or relying on friends or family to take them in. Some are staying in university dorms, others in makeshift shelters. Help is limited: The Palestinian Authority is strapped for cash, and the main U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known by the acronym UNRWA, has been handicapped by Israeli legislation.
“The West Bank has never seen large-scale forced displacement of the level we’re seeing now” since 1967, said Roland Friedrich, the West Bank field director for UNRWA. During the 1967 Mideast War, some 250,000 Palestinians were forced from the West Bank when Israel seized the territory along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
After announcing a widespread crackdown against West Bank militants on Jan. 21 — just two days after it began a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza — Israeli forces descended on Jenin camp, as they have dozens of times since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. But unlike past operations, Israeli forces also pushed deeper and more forcefully into several other nearby camps known as bastions of militant groups, including Tulkarem, Far’a and Nur Shams.
