Israel Expands West Bank Offensive, Clears Refugee Camps

People look on as Israeli tanks enter the Jenin camp for Palestinian refugees in the West Bank on Feb. 23, 2025. Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images

The Israeli military has been expelling inhabitants from refugee camps in Samaria, the northern part of the West Bank, as part of stepped-up operations against Palestinian terrorist groups.

This comes as Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Feb. 23 that he'd ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to expand operations in the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur al-Shams. That same day, the IDF sent tanks into the West Bank for the first time in more than 20 years.

The IDF has been told to prepare for an “extended stay” to fight the terrorist groups in the camps.

At least 40,000 Palestinians have left their homes in Jenin and Tulkarem since the IDF operation began.

“We will not allow the return of residents, and we will not allow terrorism to return and grow,” Katz said.

The IDF has been conducting a large-scale military operation in the area since Jan. 21, demolishing homes and infrastructure.

Bus Explosions

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the military to carry out an “intensive” operation following several explosions on buses near Tel Aviv on Feb. 20.

No one was injured when bombs exploded in three empty buses parked in a yard at night, according to the Times of Israel. A fourth bus was targeted that evening but emptied of its passengers when a suspicious package was spotted shortly before it exploded.

All the bombs were marked “Revenge from Tulkarem,” but while Hamas’s “Tulkarem Battalion” lauded the bombing, it didn’t take credit for it.  Police said the bombs’ design, attached to a stopwatch, suggested West Bank manufacture.

Bulldozers Demolish Camp

Israeli bulldozers have demolished large areas of the Jenin refugee camp, which is now virtually empty. They appear to be carving wide roadways through it, echoing tactics already employed in Gaza as troops prepare for a long-term stay.

A spokesman for Jenin, Basheer Matahen, called it “a repeat of what happened in Jabalia,” referring to the IDF’s clearing of that refugee camp in the northern Gaza area after weeks of bitter fighting.

Katz said the camps had been cleared “for the coming year,” and residents would not be allowed to return.

Israeli soldiers detain two men in the Tulkarem camp for Palestinian refugees during an ongoing Israeli military operation in Samaria on Feb. 18, 2025. Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images

The operation was aimed at Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Iranian-backed terrorist groups that have been entrenched in the camps for decades. The Palestinian Authority also fought against the groups in December in an effort to reassert its control over the areas, which are within the parts of the occupied territories the authority administers.

The authority, though, denounced the recent tank deployment as “a dangerous Israeli escalation that will not lead to stability or calm,” according to Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The action comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s Feb. 4 call for the relocation of Gazan residents and suggestion that the United States occupy, clear, and redevelop the Gaza Strip as a multinational city.

While the concept of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza has long received international backing, the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and ensuing war have made it seem increasingly unlikely.

Trump’s plan has reopened discussion of alternatives, including Palestinian relocation, after decades of cyclical violence.

Most terrorist activities in Samaria originate in the camps, and the terror groups control the areas, retired IDF Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi said in an interview with the Israel Defense and Security Forum on Feb. 24.

He called it the largest operation the IDF had ever attempted in the area. Many of the demolished homes contained weapons or IEDs, he said.

“The interesting thing is that a block away in the city of Jenin or the city of Tulkarem, everyday life continues and without any destruction,” he said. In the past, Palestinian residents of those cities would strike when Israeli security forces fought in the camps, he said.

Now, he said, they are “completely disregarding it, understanding that these refugee camps are endangering them as well.”

Many of the displaced civilians fled to the cities, he said.

Avivi said the camps, which had grown into de-facto towns, needed to be demolished permanently. The world needed to stop regarding their residents as “refugees,” he said, as they are now, for the most part, several generations removed from those displaced during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

An Israeli military vehicle uses a laser on the day of an Israeli raid in Jenin, West Bank, on Jan. 21, 2025. Raneen Sawafta/Reuters

While Israel absorbed 700,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands, fleeing Palestinians were not similarly integrated into the surrounding Arab lands and were instead confined to camps.

“We need to close these so-called refugee camps, which are not really refugee camps. You cannot be a refugee if you are already a second, third, fourth generation refugee,” Avivi said.

Katz said UNRWA, the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees, had been told to halt its activity in the camps. Israel last month formally banned UNRWA from its own territory, including East Jerusalem. Israel has long accused the agency of complicity with Hamas. Last year, the agency reported that nine of its employees had actively participated in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Until now, the agency’s operations in Gaza and the West Bank hadn’t been affected.

Avivi said an Iranian terror cell was behind the bus bombings.

Iran, with its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas defeated in Lebanon and Gaza, and having lost its influence in Syria with the fall of the Assad regime, has sought to compensate by ramping up conflict in the one arena still available, Judea and Samaria, he said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.