Extract from ABC News
Yasser Muqbel has been unable to return to his home. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
Standing in an overgrown field, Yasser Muqbel looks on forlornly at an ash-covered house less than 100 metres away.
The building had been his home for decades, but an Israeli military operation means the 57-year-old Palestinian is no longer able to access it.
"I hold back my tears when I come to see my house," Yasser says, pain etched across his face.
"If I try to reach it, I would be shot and killed — this is the summit of the tragedy, it is very difficult."
Like thousands of others, Yasser was forced to flee the Nur Shams refugee camp in the north-west of the occupied West Bank in February this year.
Israel expelled the residents of three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank this year. (Reuters: Raneen Sawafta)
With little notice, Palestinians were told by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) they needed to take whatever belongings they could carry and leave as soldiers entered the West Bank area.
Their presence was part of a counterterrorism operation named "Iron Wall".
It was launched shortly after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into force in Gaza on January 19. The fragile truce was shattered in mid-March when Israel's bombardment of the strip resumed.
A month after leaving his home, Yasser said he learnt it had been set on fire.
A drone view of Nur Shams camp in the occupied West Bank. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
"It is upsetting, but in the end, it happened and there is nothing that can be done about it," the 57-year-old said.
"This is not something that only happened to me, it happened to everyone.
"There are those whose homes were demolished, there are those that their children have been killed, so that is even worse than the fire.
"It's not a personal issue, all of the camps — Nur Shams, Tulkarm and Jenin — they are all the same tragedy."
Some in the community fear the new ceasefire in Gaza, which took effect on October 10, could prompt Israeli authorities to renew and expand their operations in the West Bank once more.
Operation Iron Wall
Nur Shams was the third refugee camp to be targeted in Operation Iron Wall, after the nearby Tulkarm camp and the Jenin camp further north were attacked the fortnight prior.
"I have instructed [troops] to prepare for a prolonged presence in the cleared camps for the coming year and to prevent the return of residents and the resurgence of terrorism," Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement in February.
An estimated 40,000 people were displaced as a result of the Israeli operation, the largest number of Palestinians forced to flee their homes in the West Bank since the late 1960s.
Palestinians were told to leave the camps in Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams. (Reuters: Mohammed Torokman)
They sought shelter wherever they could, filling places such as wedding halls and student dormitories, renting spare rooms in small apartments or moving in with family outside the camps.
With the camp still in lockdown — around 32,000 remain displaced from their homes — residents are prohibited from returning.
And many, including Yasser, have struggled to find work.
Since Hamas's deadly attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, many Palestinians who crossed into and worked inside Israel have had their permits torn up.
A drone view of buildings and roads inside Nur Shams camp. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
According to the United Nations's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), about 100,000 Palestinian workers have had their work permits suspended, slashing cash inflows that previously represented a quarter of all gross national income.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), which controls parts of the West Bank, is also in a financially parlous state, with the Israeli government withholding much of the tax revenue it collects on the PA's behalf.
"We are under pressure, and all of this is a result of a policy … enforcing people to be uneducated and depriving them of food so they will be submissive," Yasser said.
"So we will follow like sheep. Even sheep can come and find some grass.
"But if we don't work, we don't have food."
A drone view of Nur Shams camp during Israel's military operation. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
In February, the IDF claimed the decades-old West Bank refugee camps, which were set up in the years after the 1948 war and the establishment of the state of Israel, were strongholds for Palestinian militia.
The IDF said the group, which has long fought against occupation, included members from or sympathetic to Hamas, and needed to be cleared.
Troops on the ground were backed up by Israeli drones and fighter jets, while tanks were deployed to the West Bank for the first time since the early 2000s, when there was a renewed Palestinian uprising known as the second Intifada.
"I am not from the militants and I don't belong to any party — I am a Palestinian. It's my homeland, why are [the Israelis] coming here?" Yasser asked.
Israeli authorities had targeted Jenin and Tulkarm before, including tearing through streets with bulldozers in September 2024.
The PA's security forces had also conducted raids of the Jenin camp, in what many saw as an attempt to show it was taking threats in the area seriously.
But it was not enough to stop the IDF from moving in, and the current Israeli operation across the three sites is more wide-reaching than what has been seen before and has resulted in the camps being locked down.
Palestinians still expelled from refugee camps
Nur Shams is still shut off from the rest of the West Bank, with Israeli military patrolling the area.
There is no clear indication when, or indeed if, people will be allowed to return.
Deep scars have been carved into the landscape by excavators, levelling some of the buildings in the densely packed community.
A challenge to the Israeli Supreme Court against demolitions in the Tulkarm camp, a roughly 10-minute drive west of Nur Shams, was rejected.
A destroyed road in Tulkarm camp. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
The Adalah Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel argued that this came after most of the demolitions were already completed anyway.
Housing equality advocates Bimkom had said the scale of the demolitions went far beyond what the Israeli military had submitted in its official plans.
Thousands of vehicles travelling from Tulkarm to Nablus each day, including semi-trailers, are now forced along a narrow and pot-holed dirt road nearby.
The main road to the city of Nablus ran alongside the camp and has been closed to all traffic.
Checkpoints on other roads suddenly open and close, fuelling further traffic chaos.
The Tulkarm camp also remains a closed military zone. Roads inside the camp have been torn up by excavators, and soldiers guard its entrances from inside armoured vehicles.
A month after Youssef Alayan, 67, was forced to leave Nur Shams, he found a small apartment in the heart of Tulkarm to live in with his wife, two sons and two daughters and broader family.
Youssef Alayan feared for his children's safety. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
One of his sons, Muntasir, lives with a disability.
"When [the IDF] came to our house, especially our younger boy, he was very scared," Youssef said.
"And the big one, Muntasir — I was worried about him because he was shouting at them and they were saying to him 'shut up' in Hebrew.
"I was scared they would beat him up or do something against him, but praise the lord, they were only shouting."
Confusion reigned as the family tried to navigate their way out of Nur Shams in the driving rain, having been told to leave at midnight.
Youssef Alayan lives with his wife, two sons (pictured), two daughters and broader family. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
"We were scared, when we reached the street, [the IDF] began shooting at us and shouted, 'It's forbidden, go back,'" Youssef said.
"We told them that the army upstairs told us to 'get out', but they said, 'No, go back.'"
The family left with few belongings. Youssef had to sneak back into the camp to retrieve important items, such as identification documents.
One man told the ABC his home had been ransacked in his absence, and the walls riddled with bullet holes.
Yossef was not convinced the family would be able to return to Nur Shams any time soon.
"The hope that we have now is weak because every three months … they say they are extending the expulsion operation," he said.
He believed it went further than tackling militants, and spoke to an Israeli desire to erase the Palestinian refugee identity.
"They want to empty the camps, they don't want the camps to exist, they want them to be neighbourhoods of the city, like a village," Youssef said.
"The reason that there are armed men who shoot at the army — that is what they say — but I don't believe that is the reason."
Traumatised community looks for hope
Stories like Yasser and Youssef's are shared throughout the community, still traumatised by the events of late January and early February.
The desire to return home was strong, with many arguing that the "threat" perceived by Israeli forces no longer exists.
"Most of those who were accused to be criminals were either arrested or killed," said Hanadi Abu Taqa, the chief area officer for the northern West Bank at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
Hanadi Abu Taqa is the chief area officer for the northern West Bank at UNRWA. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
"So this is the feeling of the community — if there are no militants in the camp, there is no operations or no clashes happening inside the camps, so why do we still have the operation ongoing?"
UNRWA has been responsible for trying to provide services to the displaced community, including education, health care and even garbage collection.
The organisation said all of those forced to flee have now made contact with health clinics, and 90 per cent of students are back at school.
Girls have been able to return to in-person teaching three days a week in Iktaba, near the Nur Shams camp.
Girls have been able to return to in-person teaching three days a week in Iktaba. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
The school they are studying at is run by the PA, but only operates three days a week for its students due to the authority's lack of funding.
UNRWA pays for the doors to remain open three more days a week, to handle the influx of extra students.
"They are extremely happy because whether we like it or not, they are not used to being in other schools," Ms Abu Taqa said.
"When they went to other schools, they had new people to deal with, a new environment, new teachers.
"Once they are back and they are united with their siblings, with their friends, with the teachers, their psychosocial wellbeing is much better."
Education is one of the services being provided by UNRWA to the displaced community. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
One health clinic in Tulkarm had been set up in a youth centre, with the facility's management allowing UNRWA to take over the space.
But with the crisis dragging on, it was under pressure to consider relocating to another building so that the youth centre could return to its usual operations.
How long will the operation last?
An Israeli military official told the ABC the orders for the IDF to maintain its occupation of the camps were valid until the end of the year.
But the suggestion was that the sites would continue being shut off from the rest of the West Bank indefinitely.
A drone view of Nur Shams camp. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
"As long as we're giving terrorists a place to come back to, they just keep working on it, they just keep recruiting themselves and just rebuild themselves as a group," the official said.
The IDF said there was a shift in the ideology of militants in the West Bank after Hamas's deadly attacks on Israel in October 2023, when fighters poured over the Gaza fence line.
It was an attack, according to the military, which emboldened the other Palestinian militants to organise their affairs and consider bigger targets — sparking Operation Iron Wall.
Some of the militant groups, such as the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, had previously been closely aligned to the Fatah party, which controls the PA in the West Bank, opponents to Hamas.
But within many of the camps, the militants from different factions have banded together against what is seen as a common cause — opposition to the Israeli occupation.
The official claimed that there had not been widespread evacuation orders for the camps, and that civilians had not been forced to leave, insisting that the only buildings which were cleared were those associated with terrorists.
But when pressed on the fact that any civilians who stayed would themselves have been under siege, there was a concession.
"If you are willing to stay in a war zone, you understand the consequences of that — that's basically it, that's how a war zone looks."
The IDF also defended the demolition of buildings in the camps, and argued there were plans to rebuild in the future — but said any decisions on timing were a matter for the Israeli government.
Destruction in Nur Shams camp. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
"We cannot let the camp to still be used as a camp, because the terrorists used the way that the camp was built, with the narrow alleys and the very dense buildings inside of it, for their own use of terror," the official said.
"There are a few solutions that the political echelon is working on in order to give back the refugee camp in a way and in a state that won't get it back to what it was before the Iron Wall operation."
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