The United Nations has warned that Israel's forced displacement of more than 33,000 Palestinian refugees from three West Bank camps may amount to crimes against humanity, in a report that draws fresh international scrutiny to military operations in the occupied territory. The UN Human Rights Office published its findings on Friday, concluding that Israel's conduct during Operation Iron Wall — launched on 21 January 2025 in the northern West Bank — raised "serious concerns of the crime against humanity of forcible transfer."
The operation targeted the refugee camps of Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm, three of 19 such camps across the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 Middle East war. According to the UN report, Israeli military, police and other forces entered the camps, killed civilians, destroyed hundreds of homes and severed water and electricity supplies. Humanitarian access was blocked while forces went door to door compelling residents to leave. Within days, Israeli security forces had "consolidated their control" and displaced each camp's population in its entirety. As of July 2026, all 33,362 displaced refugees remain barred from returning. The rights office said the use of airstrikes, armoured bulldozers and controlled detonations "to render entire camps uninhabitable" was impermissible under international law, and that Israel's actions "appear to amount to collective punishment and raise concerns of ethnic cleansing."
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the manner in which the operation was conducted "suggests its aim was to expel as many Palestinians as possible and to make way for more illegal Israeli settlements, in further violation of international law." Israel's mission in Geneva rejected the report in strong terms, accusing the UN rights office of abandoning "impartiality, independence and neutrality" and of spreading misinformation while ignoring what it called the threat of terrorist attacks. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz had previously instructed troops to prepare for a prolonged presence in the cleared camps and to prevent the return of residents.
The report lands against a broader backdrop of intensifying rhetoric around Palestinian displacement. Two ministers allied to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Defence Minister Katz — this week separately proposed plans for the mass removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip ahead of a general election scheduled for 27 October. Ben-Gvir outlined a seven-year "voluntary emigration" scheme and said Turkey, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo were being considered as potential destinations. Hamas called on Arab and Muslim states to "take serious and unified action" to oppose the proposals, while Palestinians in Gaza dismissed them as an election ploy and vowed never to leave.
The confluence of the UN report and the renewed Gaza displacement proposals has deepened alarm among Palestinians and human rights advocates. The West Bank operations began 48 hours after a fragile ceasefire took effect in Gaza in January 2025, and the broader conflict has already claimed more than 73,000 Palestinian lives in Gaza since October 2023, according to local health authorities. A separate UN inquiry has determined that Israel's conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide — a finding Israel rejects as politically motivated. For many Palestinians, the combination of camp clearances in the West Bank and mass-removal proposals for Gaza evokes the spectre of the 1948 Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced during the war that accompanied Israel's founding.