[News] Israeli arson, bulldozers and forced labour in the West Bank’s Tulkarem

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Israeli arson, bulldozers and forced labour in the West Bank’s Tulkarem

/Israeli army violence continues in the occupied West Bank where 
soldiers act with impunity, Palestinians are ordered to leave or labour 
without pay./

Men and young men sitting on rocks looking aghast off to one side at the 
ongoing demolition
Palestinians were forced to watch as Israeli soldiers tore their houses 
down with bulldozers in the Nur Shams refugee camp on May 5, 2025 [Nedal 
Eshtayah/Anadolu via Getty Images]

By Delaney Nolan <https://www.aljazeera.com/author/delaney-nolan>

Published On 15 Oct 2025 - 
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/10/15/israeli-arson-bulldozers-and-forced-labour-in-the-west-banks-tulkarem

*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.


  *
    Farah and Myriam: Childhood Under Siege in Gaza


          Farah and Myriam: Childhood Under Siege in Gaza

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.

Delaney Nolan - TulkaremScorch marks on a building burned by Israeli 
forces on the outskirts of Tulkarem refugee camp [Delaney Nolan/Al Jazeera]

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.

Delaney Nolan - TulkaremThe Israeli army carved ‘roads’ through Tulkarem 
camp by demolishing homes. Forcibly displaced residents who re-enter the 
camp risk being shot [Delaney Nolan/Al Jazeera]

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 
<https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/7/7/israel-demolishing-homes-in-west-bank-at-highest-rate-in-over-50-years> 
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.

Delaney Nolan/Al JazeeraA former Palestinian Authority-run school is now 
a shelter for 17 families displaced from Nur Shams camp [Delaney 
Nolan/Al Jazeera]

“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.


2:39

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.

West Bank Killed Children Photo EssayThe bicycle of Saddam Rajab, a 
10-year-old who was killed by an Israeli soldier, sits outside his 
mother’s house in Tulkarem city, March 17, 2025 [Leo Correa/AP Photo]

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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