Israel has been waging a brutal offensive on the occupied territory since the summer when Israeli troops landed in northern parts of the occupied West Bank in military helicopters and large convoys of armoured vehicles, attacking the cities of Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas.
Israel escalated its attacks further after a shaky ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was signed in January. The same month, Israel’s military started a new offensive on Jenin and its surrounding areas, killing 25 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), said that Israel launched at least 38 air strikes in the occupied West Bank since January, a substantial escalation. Air strikes were extremely rare in the occupied West Bank until 2024.
Israel has focused its fire on refugee camps like Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas. They are home to the descendants of Palestinians uprooted during the 1948 Nakba, Arabic for the catastrophe, when the state of Israel was created.
Around 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes by Zionist militias during the 1948 Nakba. Today, their descendants make up the seven million Palestinian refugees worldwide.
About a million of those live in the occupied West Bank, around a quarter of which live in 19 refugee camps.
The International Federation For Human Rights announced in February that around 45,000 Palestinians had been displaced from northern parts of the occupied West Bank.
UNRWA noted that several refugee camps have been “nearly emptied of their residents”, adding that this is the longest campaign in the territory since the 2000-2005 Second Intifada.
It also marks the most destabilising time since the 1967 War when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced. About 95 percent of those Palestinians fled to Jordan, and a smaller number travelled to Syria and Lebanon, human rights experts note.
The offensive comes amid Israeli efforts to deepen its occupation of the territory, amid what experts warn is a threat of annexation.
