Three established refugee camps on the West Bank have been evacuated, Katz announces. The stated intention is "not to allow residents to return".
"40,000 Palestinians have been evacuated from the refugee camps Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams, and they are now empty of inhabitants", the defense minister announces according to Israeli media.
The work of the refugee organization UNRWA has also been stopped, according to Katz, who describes what is happening on the ground as a hunt for "terror nests".
Tanks in Jenin
The Israeli military is escalating on the West Bank alongside the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza. Earlier on Sunday, the military announced that it would expand an ongoing operation to more areas and that tanks would be sent to Jenin, which according to Israeli media has not happened in the last 20 years.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Friday that operations on the West Bank would increase in strength, after three empty buses exploded in a suburb of Tel Aviv on Thursday. Defense Minister Katz then said that "Palestinian terrorists" were behind the explosions.
Palestinians who have left Tulkarem in recent weeks have testified about how they were driven out or intimidated by the Israeli military.
Orders through loudspeakers
About 500 of these people have ended up in the nearby town of Kufr al-Lubad. They tell Haaretz that they were ordered to leave their homes when Israeli soldiers struck during the night of February 9. Evacuation orders were shouted through loudspeakers.
Then the army broke into my home and took me. It was rainy and cold. The soldiers used me as a human shield, stood behind me and put a weapon against me, so that shots that would be fired at them would also hit me, says Ibrahim to the newspaper.
City-like camps
On the Israeli-occupied West Bank, there are 19 formal refugee camps for displaced Palestinians that over many decades have taken the form of larger communities.
Violence has been simmering on the West Bank throughout the Gaza war. Israel's military raids there are said to be aimed at striking armed Palestinian groups labeled as terrorists, but many civilians have also been killed and tens of thousands of civilians have been forced out of their homes.
Named after its location west of the Jordan River. Has an area of 5,860 square kilometers – equivalent to about three Lake Vättern. The West Bank is thus 16 times larger than the Gaza Strip.
About 3 million Palestinians live on the West Bank, but also several hundred thousand Israeli settlers.
The 1990s Oslo Accords divide the West Bank into three areas: A, B, and C. In A and B, which together make up about 40 percent of the area, the Palestinians have some self-determination. In C, Israel has control. According to the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians were to gradually gain more power and control, even in area C. But that has not happened, instead Israel has rather expanded its domains, built new settlements, roads, and barriers.
Israel's grip on the West Bank began with the occupation of the area during the Six-Day War in 1967. Since then, it has been under military occupation, awaiting a final peace agreement. But there are also strong right-wing forces in Israel who believe that the country has a right to large parts of or the entire West Bank.
The Palestinian self-government on the West Bank is led by the secular party Fatah.
