JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday that displaced residents of a Palestinian refugee camp would not be allowed to return to their homes, after the supreme court ordered the government to provide a timetable for their return.
In a video statement filmed in the vicinity of the Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, Netanyahu referred to it as a “terror stronghold” and praised the Israeli army for “clearing it out under our directives.”
“I heard that there is someone in the High Court of Justice who says that the residents should be brought back here. These are not residents, these are terrorists,” the premier added.
Since January 2025, tens of thousands of Palestinian residents have been evacuated from three refugee camps in the northern West Bank — Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm — after the Israeli army launched operations it said were aimed at dismantling militant infrastructure there.
The displaced Palestinians have largely been unable to return.
Israeli army wounds two in Ramallah raid
Israeli army fire wounded two Palestinians on Tuesday during a raid in the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
A hospital in the city received “a young man with a serious gunshot wound to the lower back and a 14-year-old with a live bullet wound to the upper thigh, in addition to numerous cases of suffocation, as a result of the (Israeli army) assault on Ramallah,” the ministry said.
The army raided the former headquarters of the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, seizing documents and furniture, according to AFP journalists who witnessed and filmed the scene.
Israel had closed the organization’s office in August 2022 along with six other Palestinian NGOs and civil society groups after designating them “terrorist organizations.”
Photos and video footage taken by AFP on Tuesday showed Israeli soldiers moving furniture, office equipment, and folders out of the office and onto a trailer attached to a military vehicle.
The army also reaffirmed its order for the organization’s closure on the front door of the premises.
Israeli forces were deployed in the neighborhood for nearly four hours, fired tear gas and stun grenades toward a group of reporters, wounding four of them, according to AFP journalists and eyewitnesses.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment on the operation.
Violence in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967, has escalated in parallel with the war in the Gaza Strip, sparked by Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023.
Attacks by settlers against West Bank Palestinians have become a daily occurrence in recent months, including physical assaults, crop theft and the vandalization of houses, places of worship, and vehicles.
Attacks against Israelis have also been recorded, including a Palestinian gunning down an Israeli settler near Ramallah last month.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Israeli army announced that it had foiled an attack in the northern West Bank.
“Four Islamic Jihad terrorists who were planning to carry out a terror attack... were apprehended,” the army said.
The army added that it had arrested a wanted man in the town of Beit Rima near Ramallah on suspicion of arms trafficking.
Excluding east Jerusalem, about three million Palestinians live in the West Bank along with more than 500,000 Israelis residing in settlements, considered illegal under international law.