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Thousands of Palestinians have been displaced on the West Bank since January [1]
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Date: 2025-05-08
As reported in an illustrated New York Times article 5/5 (free link) The Huge, Under-the-Radar Shift Happening in the West Bank:
Over the past few months, an Israeli military operation has displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians in West Bank cities. Some Palestinians fear it may be laying the ground to annex the territory.
The NYT reporters who visited the city of Jenin recently saw “the contours of the new offensive unfolding among the once densely populated neighborhoods that have been cleared out since an operation began in January.”
The streets looked like Gaza. Homes reduced to rubble, walls pockmarked by bullet holes, roads ripped apart by bulldozers. Neighborhood after neighborhood deserted. But this was not Gaza. It was the occupied West Bank, another Palestinian territory where the Israeli military has been tightening control in the most sweeping crackdown on militancy there in a generation. In one of those areas, more than 10,000 people lived until recently. Now, it is empty — its roads blocked by mounds of dirt and flanked by piles of rubble.
The article continues with a description of Israeli plans for another West Bank city:
This week, the Israeli military said it would be demolishing homes in Tulkarm, a city near Jenin, to make crowded neighborhoods and streets more accessible to Israeli forces and to prevent the re-emergence of militants. Israel conducted frequent military operations in this area in recent years, but its forces almost always left within hours or days. Since January, however, its military has maintained its longest-running presence in the heart of West Bank cities in decades.
The article explains that the cities of Jenin and Tulkarm “have long been controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the semi-autonomous body that cooperates with Israel on security and which many Palestinians hoped would evolve into the government of a future state.”
But Israel’s extended presence in these West Bank cities is undermining the powers of the Palestinian Authority. Israel has argued that the Authority was not doing enough to tamp down militancy in the territory. Mohammed Jarrar, the mayor of Jenin, said in an interview at his office in March. “Israel is acting as if the Palestinian Authority doesn’t exist.”
The article says “The Israeli assault began days after a cease-fire in Gaza took hold in January.”
Israel says it has killed more than 100 militants and arrested hundreds since the operation began. It has displaced roughly 40,000 Palestinians — more than any other military campaign in the West Bank since Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Middle East war.
The article explains that “the Palestinian fears have been fed by the fact that powerful ministers in Israel’s hard-line government advocate annexation of the West Bank, home to nearly three million Palestinians and 500,000 Israeli settlers.”
That has summoned fears among some Palestinians of a second nakba — the Arabic word for disaster that is used to describe the mass flight and expulsion of Palestinians during the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to go home like in 1948,” said Saleema al-Saadi, 83, a resident of the Jenin camp who said she had been displaced once before nearly eight decades ago.
About six miles from Jenin, the reporters saw hundreds of displaced Palestinians scattered in apartment buildings meant for university students. They quote Mohammed Abu Wasfeh, 45, a Palestinian from Jenin, helping “new arrivals settle into one-room apartments while children played outside. For him, the most painful part of displacement wasn’t being forced from his home, but not knowing what had happened to it.”
“We’re living in the unknown,” he said. “We’re experiencing a tortuous and destabilizing journey.” He added: “We’ve lost control of everything.”
UPDATE: In Israel’s Demolition Path, West Bank Residents Pack Up Their Lives Free link to a heart-breaking illustrated New York Times article dated May 8 showing displaced Palestinians taking some of their belongings with them as they move.
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