Another Gaza battlefront burns – in West Bank refugee camps

Torn-up roads, cut-off water, blasted homes, blood-soaked alleyways riddled with bullet holes.

The scene resembles wartime Gaza; it is in fact a Palestinian refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

A day after an Israeli military raid in mid-January that Israel said targeted militants – amid an ongoing cycle of raids, destruction, and armed resistance – Tulkarm camp residents were picking up the pieces.

“Just like the Israelis are doing in Gaza, they are doing to us here in the camp, but on a smaller scale,” says resident Mohammed, pointing to his missile-damaged home.

With the world’s attention drawn to the rising death toll and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, refugee camps have become the West Bank front of the Israel-Hamas war, with a spike in militancy accompanying the increasingly destructive raids.

The most recent was in the northern West Bank town of Jenin Tuesday.

Analysts and camp residents say the military campaign in marginalized camp communities, which Israel, paradoxically, maintains is an effort to stop Hamas from opening such a West Bank front, is sowing extremism by damaging homes and killing bystanders.

With residents beginning to leave camps they say are becoming “uninhabitable,” analysts warn that absent a political solution, the impoverished camps, many with a long history of militancy, may soon become full-fledged urban battlefields.

Collective punishment?

Israeli raids on West Bank camps intensified in 2022 in response to the expansion of armed youth brigades that attacked settlers and the Israeli military; the first such raid in Tulkarm was in August 2023.

Since Hamas’ attack on Israel Oct. 7, raids on camps have increased tenfold, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deploying snipers, anti-tank missiles, and drone-strike assassinations. According to sources in the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank, the Tulkarm camp and nearby Nur Shams camp have been raided 20 times, on a nearly weekly basis.

Israel says the targeted militants are “terrorists,” some linked to Hamas’ military wing, who are planning and launching attacks on Israelis. Camp residents say the young men are a mix: members of the Islamist Hamas that rules the Gaza Strip, of its rival Fatah that dominates the PA, and independents who wish to take part in “armed resistance” against occupation forces.

In the mid-January raid in Tulkarm, which lasted 45 hours and claimed eight Palestinian lives, the IDF says it scanned 1,000 buildings, located more than 400 explosive devices, seized 27 weapons and other military equipment, and arrested 37 people.

It deployed airstrikes and drone strikes in the West Bank’s most densely populated camp, where more than 20,000 people live in less than one-tenth of a square mile.

Some 24 hours after the raid ended, the camp was a scene of ruin: severed water and sewer pipes poking out of roads torn by Israeli bulldozer, its telecommunications cut.

“They are destroying infrastructure. They are not just punishing the family of a ‘terrorist’; they are punishing the entire community,” retired schoolteacher Jamal Omar says, pointing to a ripped-up road.

Residents trudged through ankle-high mud and broken concrete that was once the main street; others picked through destroyed hair salons, mobile phone shops, and nongovernmental organization offices. Homes were charred. A kindergarten was marked with a crater and bullet holes.

A trickle of residents walked to the funeral tent of one of the young men killed in the raid, passing a falafel shop with a large Star of David spray-painted in red on its metal doors, apparently left behind by the IDF.

Amani Hmeidan’s home, located near where suspected militants were based, was taken over by the army during the raid. Her two elder sons were arrested, the rest of the family held in a bedroom for two days.

She points to black bootprints on her beige carpet, and says she is unsure if she will clean them. “I don’t want to see their marks everywhere, but I am worried they’ll be back,” she says.

Checkpoints and movement restrictions imposed by Israel across the West Bank since Oct. 7 have all but cut off the market town of Tulkarm from northern Israel and its Israeli Arab trade partners. Many camp residents worked in Israel prior to the war; the restrictions mean they can no longer travel there.

The raid damaged shops, their stock ruined by the fighting or confiscated by the IDF.

“Everything has been taken from us. We are not part of the armed resistance; we are not Hamas, but we were all targeted by the army,” Rafaat al-Tibi says, picking up shattered glass from his bare mobile phone shop. He is unable to buy new stock.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says, struggling for words. “I have no money, and I have no idea what I will do.”

Contributing history

The history of militant activity in West Bank camps long predates Oct. 7 and, analysts say, is being revived by recent events.

Tulkarm and camps like it were home to leading Palestinian fighters and brigade leaders from the 1970s up through the second intifada, which began in 2000.

Many families in the camps, refugees displaced and dispossessed by the 1948 or 1967 wars, are mired in multigenerational poverty.

Tulkarm, like many others, was mainly quiet after the second intifada, but the younger generation grew up with family lore of fathers, uncles, and brothers arrested or killed by Israeli forces.

Jehad Harb, political analyst at the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, says the collapse of peace process attempts in 2014 and economic hardship before and after the pandemic sowed the seeds for the current violence, which was ignited by an uptick in settler violence in 2022.

The war and increased IDF presence in the West Bank fanned the flames. Militant activity, first concentrated in Jenin, has spread to camps across the West Bank.

“When young people are without hope or work, this often ignites violence,” says Mr. Harb. “This violence can come in the form of crime, drugs, theft, but in camps it often it comes in the form of violence against the occupation.

“These young men are willing to sacrifice themselves because they have nothing to lose,” he adds. “They are ready to die in acts of armed resistance to gain political and social dignity to make up for their lack of socioeconomic dignity.”

The analyst notes that in the camps, amid this conflict with Israel, “you can’t tell who is Hamas and who is Fatah” – a sentiment residents echo.

Fatah loyalists defend Hamas members “because we are brothers” united by communal bonds and resistance to Israel, one resident says.

The unity among camp factions and their conflict with Israeli forces is also placing the communities increasingly beyond the reach of the governing PA, which sees the militant brigades and their fierce autonomy as a challenge to its own authority.

With the violence, “Israel is creating a generation more extreme than the last,” charges Mr. Omar, the former schoolteacher, who worries for his camp’s future. “It will only get worse until there is peace.”

“How do they expect us to act?”

Mustafa, a Tulkarm camp teenager who did not wish to use his real name, says he was “at home playing video games” when he was detained by the IDF.

“They are coming to us; we are not coming to them,” he says. “We are all in our homes in a refugee camp in the West Bank, not starting problems with Israelis at checkpoints.

“How do they expect us to act when they occupy our homes and shoot our neighbors?” he adds, pointing to a mural devoted to “martyrs” killed by Israeli forces. “Of course, this will push us to armed resistance.”

In the wake of the violence, some residents are moving out of the camp and into nearby apartments. The trend is sparking worries they will lose access to refugee service, but it also has security implications.

If most residents leave, Mr. Harb, the analyst, predicts, the West Bank camps may soon more closely resemble northern Gaza: rubble-strewn enclaves dominated by and attracting militants who wish to target Israeli forces.

“It will be easier for fighters to confront Israel without the fear of killing innocents,” he says. “Violence will only increase.”