'There is no future for them': Inside the camps targeted by Israel's 'Operation Iron Wall'
ITV News' Rachel Younger is in Tulkarem in the West Bank, speaking to families whose lives have been turned upside down by the war - which has now spread there
It is not easy to reach what is left of the refugee camps in the occupied West Bank. The road north from East Jerusalem always involves crossing Israeli military checkpoints.
But the queues are longer than ever, and new army roadblocks have sprung up at gates in and out of the West Banks’ towns.
It is difficult to anticipate if they will be open or closed, which means Palestinians have become used to making hour-long detours.
We see how they are getting more and more squeezed by the Israeli settlements and outposts that now seem to be on almost every hilltop.
Intense military activity has already prevented us from getting close to the Jenin refugee camp but we have heard that Nur Shams and Tulkarem camps, just five minutes apart, are relatively quiet.
Destruction in Tulkarem in the West Bank Credit: ITV News
In fact, the silence as we approach Nur Shams feels ghostly. Having been churned up by Israel’s bulldozers, the main road is almost impassable.
I have reported on earthquakes, and this looks like the aftermath of one - with piles of rubble two storeys high.
The destruction is not on the same scale as Gaza, but it feels chillingly familiar - not that we have witnessed the horrors in Gaza in person (it is just a couple of hours' drive, but as journalists, we are banned from entering).
At least here, we can talk to the people whose lives have been turned upside down. We drive on to Tulkarem camp, where the scale of destruction is just as intense.
A collapsed shop building in Tulkarem in the West Bank. Credit: ITV News
The Israeli military launched 'Operation Iron Wall' in the occupied West Bank in January, two days after the ceasefire in Gaza took effect.
Israel says it is necessary to dismantle terrorist infrastructure which could be used to attack them and to root out Palestinian armed resistance.
After the atrocities carried out by Hamas on October 7 2023, it is easy to understand why they want to protect themselves.
But although there are pockets of militants, the occupied West Bank is not governed by Hamas and there are no hostages here.
There are however plenty of ordinary families caught up in the violence.
We meet Sara Mohyeddin, a warm and chatty 19-year-old student, who learnt English by watching American films.
Her little brother Taher was shot dead outside their home by an Israeli sniper a few weeks after the war began. He was 15.
Her father, who was also shot when he rushed to help him, died of his injuries a few months later - she shows us the horrifying video of the shooting.
Sara Mohyeddin's brother was shot dead by Israelis in the West Bank. She showed ITV News horrifying footage of the moment. Credit: Sara Mohyeddin
But the war was not done with her. Last month, the soldiers came back and now the home that held all of her memories is one of the many they destroyed.
Sara’s family have been displaced and are squeezed into a small rental flat outside the camp. “Everything is gone,” she says.
While the Israeli military insists it is helping to enable the repair of damaged infrastructure, that does not include homes.
The military has also reiterated that its soldiers take measures to minimise harm to uninvolved individuals and investigate where there is harm.
But Sara said she has heard nothing about the circumstances surrounding her brother’s death.
Her family are among the 40,000 people to have been emptied out of the camps in the past few weeks.
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The Israeli Defence Minister has said it will be at least a year before anyone will be allowed to go back. But looking at how little is left, you cannot help but question if there is any intention to let people return.
It is not the first time they have had to flee their homes - the West Bank’s refugee camps were set up for Palestinians displaced from Israel in the 1948 war.
A safe homeland for the Jewish people was seen as a necessity after the Holocaust. But peace between the two sides has been hard to come by, perhaps never more so than now.
As so often in war, it is the most vulnerable who are hit hardest.
Outside Jenin, we visit one of the temporary shelters for the displaced and meet Halima, a lung cancer survivor in her 60s. She had just finished multiple rounds of chemotherapy when the tanks came to her home in the town’s refugee camp.
“My house still stands but everything inside is damaged … windows, doors, cupboards … everything was destroyed,” she tells me.
Now, the retired English teacher lives on the first floor of a requisitioned school which holds 18 families.
She weeps as she asks: “Not to go back home before a year - what will we do? My biggest worry is not being able to go back, if they won’t let us in.”
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Our final stop is an even more makeshift shelter at a newly constructed school building back in Tulkarem.
It is noisy and packed with young children. Their schools are closed because most are now being used to house the displaced.
The checkpoints mean Ramzi Hussain can no longer get to his job as a cleaner in Ramallah.
He is living, cooking and sleeping in a tiny space he shares with his wife and two young daughters; his three older sons have had to move in with their grandmother in Nablus.
They could not salvage a single possession from the ruins for their home.
“There’s no future for my children,” he sighs. “But we will stay here. We won’t make the same mistake as 1948. We will die in our land - we won't leave."
On his lap, his daughter Rahaf tells me emphatically that she misses her toys and the fridge at home. And then she starts singing.
“I am a child of the camp,” she sings. “Like my father and grandfather before me.”
Not for the first time, it strikes me how fierce the longing for home can be here.
On both sides and across the generations, it is right at the heart of this conflict.
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