Main entrance of the Jenin camp where the arch once stood, March 2025. (Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)
Main entrance of the Jenin camp where the arch once stood, March 2025. (Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)
From the outside, the al-Kafif Association’s school in the city of Jenin looks like any ordinary school on a normal day. The long building, with its rows of windows and a Palestinian flag on its front wall overlooking the courtyard, gives the impression of a regular day of class, especially with a group of children playing in the corner of a sandy playground, until we approach them.
Bearfoot and wearing pajamas instead of uniforms, the children invite us to explore their game. “We are cooking mloukhiyyeh!” one girl no older than nine exclaims in excitement. “Come see our kitchen, we made it big and nice.”
She motions her arm to present a slab of rock that is stained green. Two other girls had been smashing some grass with smaller stones on top of the slab in imitation of the process of dicing mloukhiyyeh, a kind of green jute leaf popular in Palestinian cuisine for its thick green stew.
Displaced children staying at the al-Kafif School, Jenin, March 2025. (Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)
Two little boys sit in front of a large piece of wood fixed in the sand with stones to stand straight. “This is our television,” one of the boys says, smiling.
“We made a whole house,” the first girl explains. “This is our house back in the camp.”
For the past two months, the al-Kafif school has been turned into one of several displacement shelters in the city of Jenin, housing some 20 Palestinian families from the Jenin refugee camp. According to the Jenin governorate, 90% of the camp’s population has been driven out as part of Israel’s ongoing military onslaught in the northern West Bank, dubbed “Operation Iron Wall.” As part of its campaign in Jenin, the Israeli army destroyed dozens of buildings by demolition or detonation, each of them containing several apartments. The army also destroyed most of the camp’s civilian infrastructure.
The “Iron Wall” offensive has also targeted the refugee camps of Tulkarem and Nur Shams in the city of Tulkarem south of Jenin, as well as the al-Far’a refugee camp in Tubas to the east. Altogether, Israel has displaced well over 40,000 Palestinians, according to UNRWA. Last February, the Israeli army announced that residents of the camps would not be allowed to return to their homes for at least a year, and possibly longer.
The displacement and destruction of the camp came after three years of increasing and repetitive Israeli raids in Jenin that have skyrocketed since October 7, 2023. Launched in mid-January following the signing of the ceasefire in Gaza, the current offensive comes amidst calls from far-right Israeli ministers and settler leaders to transfer the Israeli army’s “Gaza model” to the West Bank. Israel’s war minister, Israel Katz, said that no time limit is attached to the operation and that it will expand to the rest of the West Bank. This escalation is unprecedented, including the direct military displacement of civilians on a mass scale that has not been seen since the 1967 war. Palestinians see this as a prelude to Israel’s expected annexation of the West Bank, which Israel’s hardline Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, pledged to carry out this year.
The refugee camp recreates itself
At the directorate office of the Kafif school, Um Yahya, the teacher in charge of the night shift at the school, tries to solve a dispute between two of the displaced residents and a worker over the distribution of a food donation that had just arrived.
“I went from solving disputes between young students to solving disputes between grown-ups,” she says with a smirk. “At the start, one man came to the school and took shelter for two days. Then he left and came back with his family, and after that, displaced families kept arriving every day for a week, until the school was full.”
She continues: “We are a civil society association and receive no funding from the government, as we depend on donations. But now, like with many other civil society establishments in the city, we have turned our efforts to help the displaced.”
“The displaced are housed in the student dorms. People from the city and beyond bring donations of food, blankets, and other items,” Um Yahya explains. “Most of the donations come to us and we distribute them, but some people donate directly to families.”
“The displaced continue to go to their jobs and have their income, but they have lost most of their belongings and were forced to leave everything behind. They lost their homes,” she points out.
The al-Kafif school houses some 20 Palestinian families from Jenin refugee camp. (Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)
Two weeks ago, the governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Rubb, told the Palestinian Raya Media Network that the governorate was working on a plan for the prolonged sheltering of displaced camp residents, indicating that over 18,000 Palestinians have been displaced in Jenin alone. However, the efforts of the governorate and civil society organizations can do only so much to help the displaced, who have an additional burden of providing basic necessities to their families.
“We bought a couple of washing machines that all the families share, and we share the kitchen, but we also have to buy clothes, especially for the children,” Nazmi Jowhar, 53, a displaced grandfather living at the al-Kafif school, tells Mondoweiss. “Many people had shops in the camp and they lost them and the merchandise in them. Many more were workers in Israel and lost their working permits. I myself had a small herd of sheep that I took care of on the ground floor of our house, but I was forced to leave it behind.”
Dorm room where six children, two parents, and a grandfather sleep at al-Kafif School in Jenin. (Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)
“The occupation’s airstrikes in the camp began to become more intense and repetitive, and they got closer to us, so people began to leave searching for security,” Jowhar explains. “My children, their wives, and their children left over two days, and I sent my wife with them, but I stayed to keep an eye on the house. I stayed in the house alone for a week, hearing the shooting and the explosions.”
Jowhar didn’t last much longer. “One morning, I heard the noise of a drone very close by, and then suddenly it was inside the house, hovering inside the room I was in.”
Jowhar says that the voice of an Israeli soldier spoke to him from the drone’s speaker, ordering him to leave the house. “I replied that I wanted some time to take the sheep from the ground floor, but they said that I couldn’t and had to leave immediately. I was very scared, so I left with nothing but the clothes I had on my back and came here to join my family.”
“The difficult part is losing everything we worked to build for ourselves from scratch over several generations. My parents arrived in Jenin after losing everything in the Nakba,” Jowhar says, whose family was originally displaced from Haifa in 1948. “We made the camp our own identity, our community. Our entire life story is there, including all the things we as refugees went through together.”
“The displaced have recreated their community inside this little school,” Nazmi Jowhar tells Mondoweiss. (Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)
“During the First Intifada, in the late 1980s and 1990s, the entire camp functioned as one big family,” Jowhar recalls. “We were all present at the mourning of every martyr, and when someone was arrested, all the families came to their support, and that stayed with us. During the invasion of 2002, when the occupation destroyed 300 homes in the camp, the displaced were housed in the homes of their neighbors; all the houses of the camp became everybody’s home.”
Jowhar’s tone picks up a sudden enthusiasm, moving his hands as if to stress his point. “We grew with a sense of family and community, to the point that we, as residents of the Jenin refugee camp, recognize each other anywhere outside the camp and feel responsibility toward each other. We brought this sense of community here with us.”
“In a sense,” he continues, “the displaced have recreated their community inside this little school, a small version of the camp that has installed itself in the corridors of the school building.”
As Nazmi Jowhar gives his testimony, his five-year-old grandson runs out of the dorm room that has become a sleeping space for six children, two parents, and Jowhar. The toddler crosses the corridor to the kitchen on the opposite side, where a group of women are preparing the Ramadan meal for when they will break their fast. Another woman hangs washed clothes on the internal guardrail of the school overlooking the ground floor. The boy then pivots and turns back to his grandfather, approaching shyly and looking at the cameras. Nazmi picks him up. “This closeness between families is what has helped us to stay strong and resist all these years,” he explains. “It is what made Jenin such an icon of resistance.”
‘An address of our memory and our resistance’
In the school’s courtyard, two young men approach an elderly woman and salute her respectfully before they continue their way out to the street. She is Halima, one of the grandmothers who has lived at the school ever since being displaced. She had just finished her afternoon prayers.
Halima speaks perfect English and worked as a teacher when she was younger, living all her life in Jenin refugee camp until she was forced out of her home two months ago. “We have been living through the occupation’s raids for three years, and I experienced the invasion of 2002, too,” she says. “But none of those invasions was like this one. I only left when everybody else in the neighborhood had left, and as I walked out of the camp, I couldn’t bear the sight of the destruction.”
“Being from the Jenin refugee camp means I share the fact of being born a refugee with everybody from the camp,” Halima says. (Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)
“They destroyed everything. The streets were all dug up, and many houses were unrecognizable,” Halima continues. “It aches my heart, because everywhere in the camp is my home, and all the residents are like my family.”
“In the camp, we weren’t just socially close, but physically close too, because the space is very tight and streets are narrow,” Halima explains. “Several families of multiple generations lived in the same building, so our homes’ doors were always open to each other. If one of us lacked a certain ingredient to cook, a medicine, or anything else, they just walked into the next house and asked for what they needed. It’s just our way of life.”
Halima reflects on how families became even closer during invasions and curfews, explaining that community bonds grew stronger under adversity. “This time is no different,” she says. “Although we left most of our things behind, I didn’t lack anything from the moment I arrived here, because there is always somebody checking in on me, whether from my family or the community.”
Halima’s family is originally from a village near Haifa, from which they were displaced in 1948. “I grew up conscious of this fact, and this consciousness is a shared feature of our identity as refugees,” Halima says. “Wherever we go, we carry it with us. Being from the Jenin refugee camp means I share the fact of being born a refugee with everybody from the camp. That binds us to one another wherever we go.”
When asked what her hopes are for the future, Halima sighs. “I wish we could go back to the camp. It’s where my memories are,” she admits, holding her Quran with both hands on her lap. She then smiles faintly, before adding one telling detail. “The occupation army allowed one of my nephews, with others, to go back to the camp a couple of weeks after the displacement to recover what they could of our things. He asked me what I wanted him to bring back, and I said that I wanted my UNRWA provision card — a reminder of who we are and where we come from.”
“I wish we could go back to the camp. It’s where my memories are,” Hailma says. (Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)
The provision cards issued by the UN Relief and Works Agency were, for many years, the only identity document that Palestinian refugees held as proof of their refugee status. As Israel cut ties with the UN agency and continues to push to dissolve it on the international level, it argues that the agency has prolonged the refugee status of Palestinians for more than seven decades, thus prolonging the refugee crisis. But for Halima, it is the refugees who give the UNRWA card its meaning, not the other way around: “Jenin refugee camp to me is an address,” she states. “An address of our memory, of our identity, and of our years-long resistance. This is why I am proud to say that I am from Jenin refugee camp wherever I go, and this is what makes the UNRWA card important to me.”
Killing the camp
In the wake of October 7, Israel’s relentless assault on UNRWA and on the West Bank’s refugee camps is determined to put an end to this “address” once and for all. Jenin refugee camp has now been turned into a permanent station for Israeli troops. The entrance of the camp, once famous for its arch-like structure that welcomed visitors, has been completely demolished and replaced with a three-meter-tall dirt mound sealing it off.
Members of the Jenin Brigade posing in front of the entrance to Jenin refugee camp in August, 2023. (Photo: Shatha Hanaysha)
Behind the mound, the still-standing houses of the camp overlook the outside world. As we approach, three gunshots are heard from a distance. Our guide tells us that this might be a warning and that we should stay away.
Meters away from the dirt mound, just outside the closed-off refugee camp, is the entrance to the Jenin public hospital’s emergency section. In the courtyard, a young man from the camp points to one of the camp’s buildings overlooking the hospital from behind the wall. “This was the handicap rehabilitation center, one of the many associations of the camp,” he says. “It’s empty now, and all the houses behind it have been demolished too.”
The inaccessible space behind the walls imposes the feeling of the Israeli army’s invisible presence on the medical facility and its inhabitants. Inside the hospital, the sight of journalists with cameras creates tension among the patients and their families. “Is the army here?” one man asks while hurrying out of a room. Another woman in the corridor follows up: “Is there a raid going on?”
Palestinian Red Crescent Society headquarters in Jenin taken over by the Israeli army, March 2025. (Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)
Opposite the Jenin public hospital, the local headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society can be seen with sandbags on its roof placed by Israeli soldiers. Along the street, medics and nurses coming out of their rounds hurry to leave the place while turning their faces away to avoid being photographed. The Israeli campaign’s impact has reached beyond the physical destruction and displacement of the camp, creating a psychological barrier around its perimeter and constantly forcing Palestinians away from it.
Side entrance to the Jenin refugee camp, March 2025. (Photo: Qassam Muaddi/Mondoweiss)
Back at the al-Kafif school, the displaced children continue their game in the sand yard, almost unaware of what is happening at the place they know as their home. “This is my room, and these are my toys, and this is the living room,” a girl says as she caresses a piece of wood as if it were a pillow or a teddy bear. A toddler boy next to her runs a toy car on the sand, imitating the sound of an engine.
“Is this your new house now?” she is asked. “No,” she replies. “This is our house in the camp, where we will go back soon.”
As we leave, she goes back to playing with the rest of the children. They look like regular children again, playing in the sand on an ordinary day at school.
Qassam Muaddi
Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine Staff Writer for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter/X at @QassaMMuaddi.
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