Israel escalates West Bank demolitions amid illegal settlement expansion

Israeli forces person begun demolishing dozens of buildings lodging Palestinian families successful the bluish occupied West Bank, forcing wide displacement arsenic wintertime sets in, and leaving communities scrambling for shelter.

Israeli subject bulldozers and cranes tore done residential blocks successful the Nur Shams exile campy connected Wednesday, flattening homes that housed astir 100 families. Thick clouds of particulate roseate implicit the campy arsenic residents watched from a distance, according to an AFP quality bureau writer astatine the scene.

Recommended Stories

• list 1 of 3Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders slam Israel’s Gaza ban
• list 2 of 3Hezbollah weapons deadline: What’s adjacent for Lebanon amid Israeli strikes?
• list 3 of 3Palestinians successful Gaza accidental ‘lives volition beryllium destroyed’ by Israel’s NGO ban

“Being torn distant from our homes, our neighbourhoods and our memories is profoundly painful,” said Mutaz Mahr, whose gathering was among those destroyed.

“The concern tries by each means to deterioration america down and unit us,” helium told AFP, referring to Israel.

“Our location is beloved to us, the memories are beloved to us, the family, the neighbours, and the bully radical are beloved to us,” helium said arsenic bulldozers advanced. “The archetypal time, our grandparents were displaced, and this is the 2nd time.”

Mahr said helium and astir 25 relatives were sheltering successful a 100-square-metre (120-square-yard) flat aft being driven retired of the camp.

The Israeli subject claimed the demolitions formed portion of an cognition against Palestinian absorption groups, a assertion that could not beryllium independently verified. Palestinian residents and rights groups accidental the demolition amounts to corporate punishment and forced displacement nether occupation.

Residents of the Nur Shams Palestinian exile campy ticker their homes being demolished connected New Year’s Eve by an Israeli subject excavator successful the Nur Shams camp, connected December 31, 2025 [Zain Jaafar/AFP]

Nihaya al-Jendi, a subordinate of Nur Shams’s fashionable committee, said the standard of displacement had already reached situation levels earlier the latest raid.

“Today, much than 1,500 families from the campy are inactive incapable to return,” Jendi told AFP. “This is simply a large catastrophe – a existent humanitarian catastrophe for Palestinian refugees – unfolding earlier the eyes of the world.”

Israel launched what it calls a information cognition earlier this twelvemonth targeting exile camps successful the bluish West Bank, including Nur Shams, Tulkarem and Jenin.

At slightest 850 homes person been demolished oregon severely damaged crossed the 3 camps, according to Human Rights Watch, which analysed outer imagery. The radical said the demolition appears designed to carve retired “clear buffer” zones and permanently reshape the camps’ municipality fabric, tightening Israeli control.

More settlements approved

As exile homes are reduced to rubble, Israel is pushing up with amerciable settlement expansion. On Wednesday, Israeli authorities approved plans for 126 settler lodging units successful the Sa-Nur outpost successful the bluish West Bank, according to Israeli media.

Channel 7 reported that the High Planning Council, operating nether Israel’s Civil Administration, greenlit a elaborate program that would let amerciable settlers to instrumentality to Sa-Nur, which was evacuated successful 2005.

The outpost was dismantled nether past Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan, which removed settlements from Gaza and 4 bluish West Bank sites. That argumentation was reversed successful March 2024 erstwhile Israel’s parliament repealed the disengagement instrumentality done authorities known arsenic the “Cancellation of the Disengagement Law”.

Channel 7 said the caller program could instrumentality effect wrong 2 months.

Israeli moves against the UN

The demolitions and colony approvals travel arsenic Israel escalates pressure connected the United Nations bureau for Palestinian refugees.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned an Israeli determination to chopped energy oregon h2o to facilities owned by UNRWA, his spokesperson said connected Wednesday.

The measurement would “further impede” the agency’s quality to function, the spokesperson added. “The Convention connected the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations remains applicable to UNRWA, its spot and assets,” said UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, stressing that UNRWA is an “integral” portion of the UN system.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini denounced the determination arsenic portion of a “systematic run to discredit UNRWA and thereby obstruct” its enactment supporting Palestinian refugees.

In 2024, Israel’s parliament passed a instrumentality banning the bureau from operating successful the state and barring officials from interaction with it. UNRWA continues to run successful occupied East Jerusalem, which the UN recognises arsenic occupied territory contempt Israel’s annexation claims.

The bureau provides education, healthcare and humanitarian assistance to millions of Palestinians crossed Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. As Israel’s genocidal warfare connected Gaza grinds on, critics accidental the parallel battle connected UNRWA and West Bank communities signals a broader effort to dismantle the exile question altogether.