ISRAEL'S WEST BANK FRONT

Katz: IDF to remain in north West Bank refugee camps until year’s end at least

 

By Emanuel Fabian and Charlie Summers

 

The Times of Israel

Aug 10, 2025

 

The Israeli army raids Askar al-Qadim and Askar al-Jadid refugee camps, arresting a number of Palestinians in Nablus, West Bank on March 18, 2025

 

Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that IDF troops will remain deployed to northern West Bank refugee camps at least until the end of the year, committing to the continuation of Israeli military presence in the densely populated Palestinian towns for several more months.

Meanwhile Israeli security forces said they had arrested three West Bank residents who had been planning a major terror attack in Israel, as well as attacks on security forces in the West Bank.

In January, the military launched an offensive against terror operatives in the northern West Bank. The offensive, dubbed “Operation Iron Wall,” began in the Jenin refugee camp, adjacent to the city of Jenin, and later expanded to include refugee camps near the city of Tulkarem in the western West Bank — the Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps.

The offensive followed a spike in West Bank violence, following October 7, 2023. Since the Hamas onslaught, troops have arrested some 6,000 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 2,350 affiliated with Hamas.

According to Katz, the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams camps were hotbeds of terror, funded, and armed by Iran, to act as another front against Israel.

There are 20 historical refugee camps in the West Bank, all of which were established shortly after 1948, housing Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the War of Independence from homes located in what is now the State of Israel. Over the years, these camps have evolved into densely populated and enclosed neighborhoods.

In the past eight months, Katz said, the IDF has carried out an “intensive” offensive, during which residents of the camps were evacuated, gunmen were killed, and infrastructure used by terror groups were destroyed.

“The IDF will remain inside the camps at this stage, at least until the end of the year, under my directives,” Katz said in his statement.

 

Defense Minister Israel Katz is seen with troops in the West Bank’s Tulkarem refugee camp, February 21, 2025.  

 

“Today, there is no terror in the camps, and the scope of terror alerts in Judea and Samaria [West Bank] has dropped by 80 percent,” he added.

In May, the military reported that it had killed over 100 terror operatives and arrested around 320 wanted suspects, seizing approximately 450 weapons in the northern West Bank. The IDF has not updated its figures since then, but operations have continued.

In the same month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that approximately 40,000 people had been displaced from the camps by the IDF operations and relocated to nearby villages or the adjacent cities of Jenin or Tulkarem.

In July, UNRWA said that mass displacement in the West Bank had hit levels not seen since the start of Israel’s military control of the Palestinian territory nearly 60 years ago, claiming that “about 30,000 Palestinians remain forcibly displaced.”

 

Palestinian women carry their belongings as Israeli soldiers enforce an evacuation order on a house in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on July 8, 2025. 

 

During the same period, Israeli security forces issued demolition orders for about 1,400 homes in the northern West Bank, a UN spokesman said, describing the figures as “alarming.”