Director General of the Human Rights and Democracy Media Center – Palestine
This report sheds light on the aggression launched by the Israeli Army, targeting the camps in the northern West Bank, particularly the Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur Shams, and Far'a camps. The attacks use methods of isolation, arrests, killing, forced displacement, destruction, demolition, and deportation. It violates international human rights and humanitarian laws, including the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute. This report discusses not only Israel's targeting of the camps but also the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) as part of a larger scheme to eliminate the refugee issue in general and the right of return in particular. Israel's decision to ban UNRWA constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and a breach of the UN Charter, particularly the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations and relevant UN General Assembly resolutions.
The report also addresses the objectives of the Israeli aggression against the camps, weakening the Palestinian social fabric and reshaping the demographic reality by forcibly displacing the residents of the camps and some of the surrounding areas. Israel also uses these military attacks for domestic political purposes, such as maintaining the government coalition, strengthening the Israeli government's position vis-à-vis opposition parties, and covering up some of its failures in the Gaza Strip. The report concluded that targeting Palestinian camps is not simply a security issue but rather part of Israel's strategy aimed at ending the existence of the camps as a witness to the Nakba (flux of refugees in 1948) and erasing them from the political and legal equation of the Palestinian cause.
Keywords: Palestine, West Bank, camps, refugees, displacement, Israeli occupation, human rights, international law, international humanitarian law, war crimes, Palestinian, Nakba, resistance.
