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A weekslong Israeli military operation across several West Bank cities has displaced roughly 40,000 Palestinians from their homes, in what historians and researchers say is the biggest displacement of civilians in the territory since the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.
Israeli campaigns against armed Palestinian groups in three parts of the northern West Bank have forced thousands of residents to shelter with friends and relatives, or camp in wedding halls, schools, mosques, municipal buildings and even a farm shed.
The Israeli military says the operation is solely an attempt to stifle rising militancy in Jenin, Tulkarem and near Tubas, targeting gunmen who they say have carried out or are planning terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. Palestinians fear it is a veiled attempt to permanently displace Palestinians from their homes and exert greater control over areas administered by the Palestinian Authority, a semiautonomous body that has also battled the militants in recent months.
Many of the displaced are the descendants of refugees who were expelled or fled from their homes during the wars surrounding the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, a period known in Arabic as the Nakba. The renewed displacement, even if temporary, raises painful memories of the central trauma in Palestinian history.
While roughly 3,000 have returned home, most remain homeless after more than three weeks — a bigger displacement than during a similar Israeli campaign in the West Bank in 2002, according to two Palestinian and two Israeli experts on the history of the West Bank. That year, troops raided several cities at the height of a Palestinian uprising, known as the second intifada, which began with protests before leading to a surge in Palestinian attacks on civilians in Israel.
The current numbers also dwarf the displacement during intra-Palestinian clashes earlier this year, when up to 1,000 residents of Jenin left their homes, according to a residents’ leadership council there.
