Occupied West Bank, Palestine – Close to Tulkarem, on the outskirts of the Nur Shams refugee camp, grey apartment blocks sit empty. Abandoned cars are strewn amid rubble where homes once stood. Shops are silent, streaked black where flames licked against the windows.
Amid escalating violence by settlers from illegal Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military has intensified its efforts to forcibly displace the tens of thousands of Palestinians who live in the Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps.
An unprecedented ground assault, replete with bulldozers, arson, and sniper fire, has made life impossible for the people there, most of whom have been pushed out to shelters or other villages.
In the nearly empty Nur Shams camp, Israeli soldiers stand on rooftops, aim their sniper rifles from windows, and patrol empty streets with searchlights.
Sometimes, the green dot from a weapon’s laser sight dances across the bodies of the few remaining, unarmed residents as they walk by.
Since January, the Israeli military’s violent “Operation Iron Wall” has displaced some 32,000 residents of the Tulkarem, Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
The Israeli army, which has designated both camps as closed military areas, is likely to stay there for months and fire on anyone who enters.
Palestinian families have submitted more than 400 requests to Israel to retrieve their belongings from their homes, but none have been approved, according to the UN.
‘I am your lord, you are here to serve me’
Abdel’s* family is one of the few that Israeli soldiers have allowed to remain.
He, his wife, and his mother sit tensely in their front room; his three daughters are at school. They are permanently on edge because the soldiers have established a temporary barracks next to their home.
Since early February, the soldiers have forced him to work for them without pay, fixing their electricity, internet or air conditioning, and bringing them food, any time of day or night, usually at his own expense.
He is constantly afraid that the soldiers will burst into their home at any moment. “We don’t want anything. Just a safe life,” he tells Al Jazeera.
“I can’t go out with my children,” says Abdel. “I can’t even go out with my wife. We’re deprived of … even the simplest necessities of life.”
In late January, soldiers raided Abdel’s house, destroying furniture and possessions and forcing the family out of their home, which is just outside the Tulkarem refugee camp, for 10 days.
When they returned, Abdel says he was told: “We won’t throw you out of the house as long as you help us.”
“One of them even said, ‘I am your lord, you are here to serve me.’”
Since then, Abdel has obeyed their orders to keep his family safe. He estimates he is forced to spend 1,500 shekels ($440) a month on the soldiers.
“If I don’t do what they tell me, they will destroy the house,” he frets.
He says he knows the soldiers’ threats are real because, as he speaks, a house in the camp just 500 metres (about 550 yards) away is burning, sending up clouds of smoke.
All his neighbours have been displaced, and some of their homes have been burned or trashed to the point of being uninhabitable.
Abdel walks around the corner to his neighbour Nihad’s home, which was also taken over by soldiers for a while but sits empty now, surrounded by half-burned possessions, including personal documents, set alight by Israeli soldiers.
In April, Israeli soldiers stormed into Nihad’s home at 3am, and ordered him, his wife, and three children at gunpoint to leave within five minutes. The soldiers moved in for the following 75 days, using it as a barracks.
Nihad, who refused to give his family name for fear of reprisals from Israel, says he was ordered to stay away but came back anyway to survey the damage.
Together, the two men pick through the wreckage. Nihad tells Abdel the home he loves is unrecognisable, that he and his family have lost everything.
Soldiers smashed everything they could find, even the washing machine’s circuits, tore up electrical boxes, broke toilets and knocked down doors.
The soldiers slept in his children’s beds and scattered infants’ clothing across the floor. Rubbish and debris are strewn through every room; a bird has nested in the shower.
The soldiers set up a sniper outpost in the stairwell ringed with sandbags, and left the walls daubed with the names of Israeli soldiers and their patrol schedules in Hebrew. The words “F*** Hamas” in English are scrawled in lipstick across a dresser mirror.
This kind of damage, Abdel says, shows the consequences of defying the soldiers’ demands.
An atmosphere of terror
Nihad is far from the only victim. The Israeli military has destroyed hundreds of homes in the camps and adjoining neighbourhoods during its raids.
It also damaged critical infrastructure, including water and electricity networks.
In July, Israel’s High Court froze a military order for the demolition of 104 residential buildings, comprising some 400 homes, in Tulkarem.
But the next day, it amended its ruling to permit the army to demolish for “overriding security considerations” – effectively giving it broad discretion to continue.
Adalah, an Israel-based legal centre for Arab minority rights, has been petitioning against the demolitions.
In July, the centre submitted an expert opinion from the Israeli human rights organisation Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights to the Supreme Court, showing that 162 buildings had been demolished – far more than the number in the order.
Adalah’s investigation found that the demolitions had so far “erased” about one-third of the built-up area in the northern sector of Tulkarem, and made other areas unlivable, according to Miriam Azem, Adalah’s international advocacy coordinator.
The court rejected Adalah’s petition on July 25, asserting that “the demolition order was lawful and necessary, upholding the military commander’s broad discretion and limited judicial review”, Azem tells Al Jazeera.
Abdel has no means to object – angering the soldiers would mean putting himself at the mercy of a military force with a long history of demolishing, detaining and killing.
Accelerating demolitions, adding arson to the destruction
Israel is now demolishing homes in the West Bank at the fastest rate since the 1967 War, partly thanks to equipment from the United States.
At the beginning of the year, the Israeli army had just two or three Caterpillar bulldozers, which are produced in Texas.
Now they have 10, according to Suleiman Suhairi, a member of Tulkarem’s Popular Committee, which acts as a liaison between the refugee camp and external bodies, such as the UN.
Residents say the Israeli army is also increasingly committing arson, burning residential homes rather than bulldozing them.
“Every day, they burn two or three houses,” Suhairi said, speaking in early July.
The burnings increased in June, but the soldiers claim they have nothing to do with it, Suhairi says.
To prevent arson, residents now try to remove or cut off their cookers, which are often used to start fires, says Suhairi, explaining that firefighters and homeowners say soldiers light all the burners and throw a blanket on them to start the blaze.
“The patterns of exploitation Palestinians face today in the West Bank represent an intensification of an ongoing strategy designed to make life unbearable,” says Ihab Maharmeh, a researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, which focuses on Palestinian workers and displacement.
“Israeli authorities are effectively transforming everyday life and livelihoods in the West Bank into a form of warfare.”
Nur Arafeh, a fellow with the Malcolm H Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, says Abdel’s story “exemplifies the colonial mentality that underpins Israel’s occupation – one rooted in supremacy, domination, oppression and the systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians”.
“The soldier’s language”, referring to himself as Abdel’s “lord”, “reveals the profound power asymmetries at play, whereby the threat of expulsion is used as a coercive and exploitative tool to force compliance and free labour”, Arafeh says.
Al Jazeera contacted the Israeli army and the Government Press Office for comment on the allegations of arson and coerced labour, but received no response.
‘Israel doesn’t respect international law’
On a hill above Nur Shams, more than 130 members of 17 families have taken shelter in a government-run school-turned refugee camp. Each family occupies one room, and all share one toilet.
The shelter is privately funded, which helps fill the gaps left as local humanitarian agencies struggle to meet needs with limited funding.
In the shelter, life continues: families hang laundry on lines; they grow chilli peppers and herbs in pots. Those who have fled there are just a short walk from their old homes, but a world away from their former lives.
Standing on the third-floor balcony, a man draped in a keffiyeh looks at his former home, just visible between two apartment buildings but unreachable now, empty. Those who try to go back to their homes in the camp risk being shot at and possibly killed.
Most families displaced from the camps end up renting temporary accommodation in the area – Mohamed Kamel, his wife, and their four children are now living in a rented home.
Israeli soldiers forced Kamel and his family out of their home at gunpoint five months and two days before he spoke to Al Jazeera in July. He knows because he counts the days.
The day they left, it was pouring with rain, and they were given just two minutes to leave. They lost everything: every piece of clothing, every toy, even their young daughter’s teddy bear. They walked for hours to a neighbouring village, carrying Kamel’s injured mother on a stretcher as she had recently broken her leg in a fall.
Kamel had lived all 40 years of his life in the family home. Now, the family is renting an apartment in the neighbouring village.
When Kamel tried to return to fetch his car, which he needed for work, he was shot at by soldiers and barely escaped with his life.
Many people here have lost loved ones. Of the 198 Palestinians who were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the start of the year, 78 are from Jenin and Tulkarem.
Even Abdel is not safe.
The fires largely stopped by early August, and in mid-August, the soldiers near his home moved to a different barracks, and he briefly found relief from their demands and harassment.
But 10 days later, Abdel was arrested and detained for a month. While he was being held, his wife, kids and mother were expelled from their home.
About a week after that, Israel rounded up about 1,500 residents of Tulkarem, including children. Abdel was released days later.
“They were difficult days, as I was brutally beaten. I’m still in pain.”
“I’m exhausted and sad,” Abdel says of not being able to return to their home. The family is renting an apartment nearby now.
“We don’t know what the future will hold,” he says. “Things are getting worse.”
*Name changed for the subject’s safety
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