Tens of thousands of people have been driven into flight during an Israeli military operation that began in the northern West Bank in January. The operation has been the most prolonged since the early 2000s, says Juliette Touma, spokesperson for the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.
"It affects several refugee camps in the area, and it causes the largest displacement of Palestinians on the West Bank since 1967", she says, referring to the six-day Arab-Israeli war that led to Israel's occupation of the West Bank.
Around 30,000 Palestinians are still on the run after the operation began in January, says Thameen Al-Kheetan, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He adds that Israeli security forces have ordered that around 1,400 homes in the northern West Bank be demolished, figures that he describes as alarming. In addition, more than 2,900 Palestinians have been forced away in Israeli demolitions since October 2023, he adds. 2,400 other Palestinians – nearly half of them children – are on the run as a result of Israeli settlement actions, according to Al-Kheetan.
According to him, such actions, depending on the circumstances, can be "equivalent to ethnic cleansing" and "constitute a crime against humanity".
