Displaced Palestinians Face Eviction and Despair Two Years After West Bank Clearances

TULKAREM, Occupied West Bank – Hakim Mar’i lies on a thin mattress in a dimly lit apartment, his mangled leg elevated. Once a construction worker in Israel, Mar’i now survives on credit and the charity of others, unable to afford the medical treatment required for a leg wound sustained in 2019 that worsened after he was beaten by Israeli soldiers during his family’s forced eviction from the Tulkarem refugee camp.

Mar’i’s current shelter is one of four homes his family has occupied since January 2025. Windows are patched with old blankets to block the light because the family cannot pay for electricity. The apartment sits mere meters from the rubble-strewn entrance of the Tulkarem camp, a site that was once their multi-generational home but has since been reduced to ruins.

“My hands are empty. Nobody is with me. Nobody is standing beside me,” Mar’i said, describing the isolation and financial collapse that have driven him to contemplate suicide multiple times over the past year and a half.

Mar’i’s mother, Salwa, recounted the pain of watching her family’s four-story home demolished to make way for a new road through the emptied camp. The destruction of physical structures has severed ties to a history stretching back to their displacement from al-Khudayra, now Hadera, in 1948.

The Mar’i family is among more than 33,000 Palestinians forcibly removed from the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps during a sweeping military operation in early 2025. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), this represents the largest single episode of forced displacement in the West Bank since the Israeli occupation began in 1967.

UN satellite imagery indicates that 20% of all buildings across the three camps have been destroyed, with another 28% damaged. Roland Friedrich, UNRWA’s director for West Bank affairs, described the destruction as “severe and unprecedented.”

Friedrich noted that 85% of those displaced have lost their regular income, and over 80% are now paying rent—a concept foreign to families who previously lived in camps without housing or utility costs. The camps remain under a renewed closed military zone order, preventing residents from returning.

“The UN’s position is very clear: People have to be allowed to return. The camps must be rebuilt,” Friedrich said. However, unlike the reconstruction following the Second Intifada, there is currently no return plan. Friedrich expressed concern that the military operations aim to alter the geographical reality of the Palestinian refugee issue.

As the emergency stretches toward two years, the informal safety nets provided by landlords and shopkeepers are fraying. In Tulkarem, where many residents previously worked in Israel, economic conditions have deteriorated sharply following the revocation of Palestinian work permits after the October 2023 Hamas attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza.

Khadija Zbeidat, a widow displaced from the Tulkarem camp’s Haret al-Nadi section, faces imminent eviction from the spartan room she shares with nine children and grandchildren. Her family was granted the space rent-free by a relative, but the landlord’s sister recently informed them they must leave because the family has stayed too long.

“They want the land… But where can we get money? The rent is very high, and we can’t afford it,” Zbeidat said. She expressed fear that her children may inherit a more precarious existence than the displacement they already know.

Zbeidat’s family, like many others, was forced to flee without their belongings. Some residents have risked gunfire to retrieve items from the ruins, including a doll for Zbeidat’s granddaughter, Sandy, who had refused to stop crying.

UNRWA’s funding shortages have limited its ability to provide comprehensive support. The agency has shifted to a “targeted approach,” maintaining some schools and health clinics but leaving thousands without assistance. Friedrich highlighted a rise in gender-based violence and severe depression among displaced children.

“We’re already at the brink now,” Friedrich declared. For families like the Zbeidats and Mar’is, survival depends on dwindling credit and the hope that tomorrow might bring a solution that today does not.