UN raises ‘ethnic cleansing’ concerns over Israel’s West Bank operation

Israel’s military actions resulting in the displacement of entire Palestinian populations in three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank “appear to amount to collective punishment and raise concerns of ethnic cleansing”, a United Nations Human Rights report has found.

Israel’s Operation Iron Wall in January and February 2025 killed 102 Palestinians and displaced more than 33,000 residents from the Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps, said the report, titled Destruction of Palestinian refugee camps in northern West Bank.

Displaced Palestinians reported being told by Israeli officers that there would be no more refugee camps and that they should “all go to Jordan”.

Such large-scale, long-term and systematic displacement of the Palestinian population could amount to a crime against humanity of forcible transfer, the report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said on Friday.

It stressed that the use of air strikes, armoured bulldozers and controlled detonations to render entire areas uninhabitable and prevent the return of residents, in the absence of imperative military necessity, is not permissible under international law.

“The way Operation Iron Wall has been 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,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.

The three camps are among a total of 19 in the West Bank that were established to shelter Palestinian refugees after the mass forced expulsion during the Nakba in 1948 and have been administered by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

As of July, about 33,362 displaced Palestinian refugees from these camps remained forcibly displaced, according to UNRWA.