Press Releases
The approach, policies and practices that the Israeli regime and forces are using in the current “Operation Iron Wall” against Palestinian refugee camps in the north are one indication of the imposition of a new status quo in the West Bank. Based on statements and declarations made by the Israeli regime, this includes significant changes in the strength and frequency of the policies and practices of land confiscation, suppression of resistance, and segregation, fragmentation and isolation, to achieve advanced levels of colonial expansion and domination over the West Bank. First: expansion of Israeli sovereignty in principle and in practice through the policy of segregation, fragmentation and isolation that encompasses more robust and complete closures, rampant home demolitions, and land confiscation that exacerbate Palestinian forced displacement and transfer. Second: use of the same genocidal methods as in the Gaza Strip to eliminate the resistance and dismantle refugee camps. Third: full elimination of international presence, which began with the banning of UNRWA and has spilled over to international non-governmental organizations. Fourth: normalization of Israeli military, security and civil presence in the areas that should be under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
1. Expansion of Israeli Sovereignty in Principle and in Practice
In parallel to committing a genocide in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli regime is quickly and decisively imposing new legislation and facts on the ground to entrench its colonial domination in the West Bank. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that “The year 2025 [...] will be the year of [Israeli] sovereignty in Judea and Samaria [West Bank],” adding that he has “instructed the Settlement Directorate in the Ministry of Defense and the Civil Administration to begin a collective, professional, and comprehensive effort to prepare the infrastructure required to impose sovereignty.”
In practice, this means the application of Smotrich’s “Decisive Plan,” which he and his party presented to the Israeli regime in 2017. In the plan, Smotrich identifies two main scenarios for how to deal with the Palestinians: Palestinians who renounce their national aspirations and rights will be allowed to stay in the “Jewish State”; if they do not, then they have the “option” to leave or they will be forced to leave. On 23 February 2023, Smotrich was promoted to “second” Israeli defense minister and granted control over the Israeli colonial expansion enterprise in the West Bank. Therefore, what is happening in the West Bank is the implementation of Smotrich’s plan.
For the Israeli regime, land confiscation, forced displacement and transfer, and colonial expansion go hand in hand. Furthermore, colony construction necessarily includes the construction of associated infrastructure, such as apartheid roads, and additional closures and checkpoints to further confine, contain, fragment and isolate Palestinian communities. On 27 June 2024, Israel approved the establishment of the Nahal Heletz colony on land in the Bethlehem suburbs, aiming to isolate the governorate, connect the Etzion colonial bloc (consisting of 24 colonies) to Jerusalem as part of the “Greater Jerusalem” master plan, and confiscate everything in between. The next day, five outposts (colonies established by colonizers with the support of the Israeli forces) were officially recognized by Smotrich and the Israeli “Security Cabinet.” In 2023 and 2024, Israeli approval of colonial expansion plans reached record high. The 2025 Israeli colonial expansion plans include 1,800 housing units per month. These plans evidently need lands to expand and build the colonies on, so it is no surprise that in December 2024, the Israeli regime confiscated almost 24,000 dunums in the West Bank, declaring that they will be used for colonial expansion. The Israeli regime has also declared that it will construct 1,440 housing units for Israeli colonizers on UNRWA’s premises in Sheikh Jarrah, which the Agency was evicted from, due to, once again, new Israeli legislation that banned UNRWA.
From June 2023 to March 2024, OCHA documented 793 closures in the West Bank, which include checkpoints, earth mounds, concrete blocks and gates. This constitutes a 23 percent increase in the last nine months, and does not include tightening and increasing movement restrictions such as closing gates that were previously left open, limiting hours, and increasing Israeli forces’ presence at about 100 pre-existing checkpoints. The OCHA report does not include the numerous checkpoints imposed after March 2024. The PA has declared that the West Bank currently contains at least 900 checkpoints. For example, Israeli forces closed the gate at the Jabara Bridge (installed in August 2024), the southern entrance of Tulkarem City, completely prevented people and vehicles from entering and exiting, including ambulances and healthcare personnel responding to calls for assistance, and imposed curfews. These closures and heightened restrictions not only serve to prevent access to essential services (such as education, healthcare and emergency responses), but also fragment and isolate Palestinian communities from each other, including severing communities in half. More importantly, these policies and practices exacerbate the coercive environment, forcing Palestinians to leave: if these closures become the West Bank’s new status quo, they will also prevent the return of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been forcibly displaced as a result of “Operation Iron Wall.”
“Operation Iron Wall” which began in Jenin - just two days after the ceasefire in Gaza - is ongoing and continues to expand to include refugee camps, towns and villages in the governorates of Tulkarem, Jenin and Tubas. Not only have Israeli forces have declared that they have no intention of withdrawing, but have indicated that the “operation” will be expanded to include the rest of the refugee camps in the West Bank. Israeli forces have confiscated Palestinian homes in the camps, expelled their residents and turned them into bases of operation. This is a significant change in practice, as the permanent presence of Israeli forces in the West Bank was largely abandoned after 2005. In the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarem and others and in their surrounding, Israeli forces have forcibly displaced over 40,000 as a result of their “Iron Wall” invasion and siege.
2. Use of the Same Genocidal Methods as in the Gaza Strip to Eliminate the Resistance and Dismantle Refugee Camps
Implementing identical practices as in the genocide on the Gaza Strip, “Operation Iron Wall” has involved air and ground invasions, sieging the refugee camps, bombing and destroying around 180 Palestinian homes, killing at least 50 Palestinians and displacing tens of thousands. Israeli forces have laid waste to a significant amount of infrastructure, such as at least 5 kilometers of roads and water pipelines, as well as cutting off water and electricity. The attacks were not limited to the destruction of residential and basic infrastructure, but also included hospitals, ambulances and healthcare workers, and the deliberate obstruction of access to healthcare to the wounded. These acts demonstrate that the destruction of the healthcare system, as in Gaza, is intentional, to create conditions of life that would lead to the destruction of the Palestinian populations there. In essence, Israeli forces are replicating Israeli genocidal acts and practices in the Gaza Strip in the West Bank: massive forced displacement; wanton and willful destruction of residential, basic and health infrastructure; and laying siege and establishing checkpoints to deny movement, aid and services.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed that the “operation” was a shift in military strategy and "the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza." Smotrich echoed Katz, when he said “Funduq, Nablus, and Jenin must look like Jabalia,” a refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip that was turned to ruble and ash during Israeli’s genocide. In practice, the targeting and destruction of refugee camps began prior to the current Israeli forces’s raid and siege: since the start of the genocide in Gaza in 2023, the Israeli regime “resumed airstrikes in the West Bank for the first time since the Second Intifada. By 2024, it had carried out 152 airstrikes, 82 of them in densely populated refugee camps.”
Israeli forces have also raided Palestinian cities and villages across the West Bank, demolished over 160 Palestinian structures, and forcibly displaced more than 234 people, mostly in what has been designated as Area C. Additionally, demolition orders persist at an alarming rate, with 45 home demolition orders delivered to the whole village of al-Nu’man, established prior to 1948, which, if implemented, will result in the ethnic cleansing of all its 150 residents. Another 45 home demolition orders were delivered to Beit Ummar village in the north of Hebron, in addition to many others across the West Bank. The number of demolitions increased by 50 percent from 2023 to 2024 with a quarter of these demolitions occurring via Israeli raids and invasions of refugee camps in the north of the West Bank.
Israeli collective punishment of refugee camps as the incubators of Palestinian resistance continues through the arbitrary arrests and detention of over 100 Palestinians and the targeted killings of women, children and the elderly, with the aim to suppress resistance. The policies and practices used by the Israeli forces spread fear and terror, implemented under the guise of “anti-terrorism”, to exert Israeli control and domination over the Palestinian populations and force their submission, capitulation and of course, displacement.
3. New Israeli legislation against UNRWA and international presence
The Israeli regime’s new strategy and legislation include eliminating international presence in Palestine, and this did not stop with the laws banning the presence and operations of UNRWA. In September 2023, visas to staff members of some 200 international non-government organizations were frozen by the Israeli regime, and “every single international NGO staff has been without a working visa and with no way to apply for one.” The Israeli regime has since passed another law to deny registration and work visas to international organizations, requiring them to re-register and go through a vetting process. The vetting process will be headed by a new committee with members from a number of Israeli ministries, including Public Security Minister Ben-Gvir, and COGAT, the Shin Bet, police and others. The committee will be allowed to refuse registration and visas to organizations if they “delegitimize Israel,” “act against the interests of the State of Israel,” or otherwise endanger Israeli “national security.” The banning of international presence will further exacerbate the coercive environment by preventing INGOs from carrying out essential projects and services, which have become particularly crucial with the Israeli regime attempting to impose new facts on the ground in the West Bank. Further, the new law, regulations and committee all serve also to silence international organizations and diminish international responsibility to provide Palestinians with the international protection that they are owed.
4. Normalization of Israeli presence
Taking into consideration all of the above, the Israeli regime is establishing a new status quo in the West Bank. Through invasions and raids that include extensive destruction and willful killing and assassinations, re-setting and establishing permanent military bases/infrastructures, increasing the number of checkpoints and severely restricting Palestinian movement and access, and confiscating and colonizing large swathes of land, the Israeli regime is reinforcing its direct presence. Such presence will accelerate full Israeli colonial domination, including eliminating the political role of the PA in the West Bank.
For over 76 years, the Israeli regime has relentlessly pursued its colonial project’s ultimate goal: controlling the maximum amount of land with the minimum number of Palestinians. While simultaneously implementing a genocide in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli regime has reformulated and further entrenched its colonial domination with the purpose of reestablishing permanent Israeli presence in the West Bank. These laws, policies and practices aim to dismantle Palestinian refugee camps, eradicate Palestinian resistance, and expand its colonial enterprise. As the Israeli regime replicates methods from its genocide in the Gaza Strip in the West Bank, its ongoing colonial domination and ethnic cleansing remain crucial pillars.
On 25 January, UN experts stated: “The long-standing impunity granted to Israel is enabling de-Palestinisation of the occupied territory, leaving Palestinians at the mercy of forces pursuing their elimination as a group.” In order to end the Israel regime’s crimes of forced displacement and transfer, colonization and apartheid, and the ongoing genocide, states must fulfil their obligations and take practical measures in the form of political, economic and military sanctions. It is clear that just as the Israeli regime deliberately targeted the Gaza Strip and the refugee camps therein, they have also targeted the refugee camps in the West Bank. As such, the practical measures of states must include ensuring the provision of international protection by securing the ongoing presence and operations of UN agencies and international organizations, and in particular UNRWA.