Nahaya Al-Jundi remembers the terror she felt on Feb. 7, when Israeli soldiers stormed her home in Nur Shams, a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Tulkarem in the northwestern West Bank. “I peered through the window and saw a D9 bulldozer advancing toward us,” she told +972. “It tore through our garden, crushed the outer wall, then suddenly stopped just meters from our house. Behind it, I saw soldiers walk through the alleyways, swarming the buildings across from us.

“For two days, my husband, our 14-year-old daughter, and I were besieged inside our home,” Al-Jundi, 53, recalled. “When the soldiers finally forced us out, we had to walk through streets filled with mud and rubble. They made us sit on the cold dirt at the camp’s entrance, before finally letting us walk toward the city [Tulkarem].”

Once home to more than 13,000 Palestinians, Nur Shams is now a ghost town after Israel’s most aggressive military campaign against West Bank refugee camps in decades. Reports indicate near-total destruction across its dense one-square-kilometer area east of Tulkarm, with nearly every home damaged and many completely flattened to rubble.

According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the more than four-month-long assault on the Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps has killed at least 13 Palestinians — including a child and two women, one eight-months pregnant — wounded dozens, and displaced over 4,200 families, totaling over 25,000 people.

As head of Nur Shams’ Association for the Disabled, Al-Jundi received rare permission to re-enter the camp in March to retrieve oxygen devices and other medical equipment for the displaced residents. “I was shocked by the scale of destruction,” she told +972 Magazine. “Soldiers had destroyed anything from medical equipment to kitchen furniture. There was nothing left to salvage.

“On some of the roads the army is expanding [to allow the passage of military vehicles through the camp], the debris from home demolitions has piled up so much that some houses were buried under the rubble of others,” she continued. “There are now no stores, no markets, no functioning infrastructure. The water and sewage networks have been destroyed, as well as the rooftop water tanks [on houses that were not demolished].”

At the beginning of May, a new wave of Israeli demolition orders hit the two camps, targeting 106 residential buildings — 58 in Tulkarm and 48 in Nur Shams. Typically three stories high with two apartments per floor, these buildings house mostly low-income refugee families of five to 12 people. Lacking formal court approval, the military issues these orders either verbally during raids or via hastily distributed leaflets.

“There’s no list of names, no exact counts of the families whose homes have been destroyed,” Al-Jundi explained. “But when you look across the camp, you can see the transformation with your own eyes. About 240 houses have already been demolished, and 40 were burned to the ground.” Less than an hour before we spoke, four more homes were demolished in the camp.

‘Everything was gone in seconds’

While some displaced families have sought refuge in temporary shelters established by local municipalities and village councils near the camp, these facilities offer little privacy and fail to meet basic needs. As a result, most have chosen to rent apartments in Tulkarm city instead, surviving on sporadic aid distributions and loans. Even the UNRWA mobile clinic stationed at the shelters provides only minimal medical care.

Majdi Issa, a 28-year-old resident of Nur Shams, described to +972 how Israel’s incursion into the camp upended his life. “I saved up for years and built a home above my family’s house in 2019,” he said. “After the war began and work inside the Green Line came to a halt, I bought a coffee roaster and opened a shop in the camp, working alongside my father.”

Upon returning from the Umrah pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia on Feb. 14, Issa found that his family had been forced to flee the camp. “They had already left the camp by then and told me the army was expelling residents,” he recalled. “I had to rent a place in the city with my wife, and I lost the shop which had been supporting my whole family.”

When Issa came across a map listing buildings slated for destruction in Haret al-Jami, a neighborhood inside the camp, Issa was relieved to see his family’s home wasn’t on it — but that relief was short-lived. “From a nearby overlook, we watched the bulldozers work. Then suddenly, one turned and tore down our building. All our furniture was still inside. We weren’t given a chance — everything was gone in seconds.”

Around 12 buildings were demolished in Haret al-Jami, each housing two to four apartments. “I take whatever work I can find just to cover rent and put food on the table,” Issa said. “Life has become unbearable since the raids began, and they still haven’t ended.”

According to Al-Jundi, many residents’ homes in Nur Shams that haven’t been demolished have instead been turned into barracks for the Israeli army. “Soldiers moved into the same homes they forced us to abandon. They cook in our kitchens, play music, eat and drink, while the families who own these homes are left homeless.

“Even if the destruction ended today, few could return — there are too many homes destroyed, too little infrastructure left,” Al-Jundi continued. “But if my house remains standing, even if it’s only its walls, I’ll go back.”

‘Sites of endless catastrophes’

Like Nur Shams, Tulkarm refugee camp, located just north of the city of Tulkarm, has been emptied of its residents. Occupying a mere 0.18 square kilometers, the camp once housed over 21,000 people before the Israeli military launched one of the largest displacement operations in the northern West Bank’s history.

“What’s happening in Tulkarm is part of a systematic liquidation of the refugee cause,” said Nour Al-Din Shahadeh, a camp resident and head of its Association to Combat Extreme Poverty, in an interview with +972.

Shahadeh’s own home, a 12-apartment complex near the camp entrance, was among the first to be targeted when Israeli soldiers raided it on Jan. 27. “They forced my family and ten other families at gunpoint that night,” he said. “We weren’t even allowed to grab our belongings. Now we’re renting in Tulkarm city, living a life unlike anything we’ve ever known.”

Apart from his own home, Israeli authorities issued demolition orders for approximately 58 homes in the camp, including several of Shahadeh’s relatives. “My mother and brother were forced out of their home by soldiers,” he said. “Everything we knew was taken from us in an instant.

“When we tried to negotiate [our return to the camp] via the Civil Coordination [a branch within Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories], they declared the camp a ‘closed military zone,’ where entry and exit are forbidden without Israeli military permission,” Shahadeh explained. 

Current estimates based on residents’ reports suggest at least 250 homes in Tulkarm have been completely destroyed, with another 400 partially damaged. Shahadeh described how displaced families, many already struggling in extreme poverty, now crowd into schools or makeshift shelters that lack both privacy and basic living necessities. “They forced families out at gunpoint, only to move soldiers into our homes. Now we’re left homeless while they occupy our houses.”

While the Palestinian Authority has proposed housing displaced families in temporary caravans, Shahadeh dismissed the idea outright. “We don’t want caravans. We want to return to our homes,” he said. “These camps, no matter how humble, represent our dignity and identity.

“This is a new Nakba that we are living through. Those still speaking of political solutions must first witness what’s happening here: West Bank refugee camps have become sites of endless catastrophes — demolition, displacement, and deprivation of the most basic rights.”

In response to a request from +972, the IDF Spokesperson provided the following statement:

 “The IDF operates in Judea and Samaria, and specifically in the Tulkarm area, to combat and thwart terrorism, while strictly adhering to international law. An integral part of this effort involves opening routes in the refugee camps, including in the Tulkarm refugee camp. For this purpose, the demolition of rows of buildings is required. The public had the opportunity to approach the authorities to examine the possibility of removing their belongings from the buildings.

“The security forces operate in a complex security reality in the area, where terrorists carry out attacks while exploiting and hiding behind the civilian population. In order to locate and uproot terrorist infrastructure at its roots, the IDF is required to operate from within houses in the area for varying periods, depending on operational needs and the situation on the ground.

“Use of civilian property by IDF soldiers is not consistent with the IDF’s values and constitutes a violation of its directives. Exceptional incidents that raise concerns of deviation from orders and the values expected of IDF soldiers will be handled accordingly.”