Even from such a distance, the Israeli flag was clearly visible, hanging from a building in what remained of the Palestinian neighbourhood.
A man who lives across the valley pointed out a second flag, then a third – his count eventually reaching five.
“There’s nobody there. All the houses are empty,” he said sadly, adding that locals could be shot for even approaching. “[Only] the Israeli army is in there doing nothing. They just go into the houses and they sit.”
Nur Shams camp lies in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem. It was established in 1952, for Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel in 1948, in what they call the Nakba, or “catastrophe”.
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Two years ago, the UN said nearly 14,000 people were registered as living there, across 0.21sq km (0.08sq m) of land. Now, it is practically empty.
An Israeli military offensive earlier this year drove more than 40,000 Palestinians from their homes, including Nur Sham’s residents. Since then, many homes have been bulldozed – the flattened lines are visible from across the valley – and locals say they have no idea if they can ever return to the buildings which are still standing.
Nehaya Aljonde (54) said she spent three days trapped inside her home, with her husband and 14-year-old daughter, in February, as the Israeli military raided the camp.
“They cut off the electronics, the water. It was winter and it was cold,” she recalled. “All the area was army. The bulldozer was in front of my window, I was so scared. The sound was so loud.”
At the end, she was ordered to leave. “It was raining ... The [Israeli] army were with us and they searched us. I brought one small bag with clothes and medicines. We didn’t expect to leave. We left the door open.” She has not been allowed to go back.
Aljonde says she loved living in Nur Shams: “The kids, the women, the culture, the schools.” Leaving, she says, was the “hardest moment of my life. I lived all my life there and I still want to live there.”
She received no compensation, apart from 600 shekels (€152) from the Palestinian Authority, which ostensibly controls Tulkarem and other Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Aljonde is renting a house now.
Aljonde – who heads an association for people with disabilities in Nur Shams – said she sees no valid reason for the expulsions. “It’s collective punishment. Disabled people, elderly, and innocent people, most of them.”
She says there were 180 people with disabilities living in the camp, most of whom lost their homes too.
An Israeli warplane rumbles above as she speaks. Gesturing to the sky, she says the only thing that will stop the Israelis is “God,” and then pauses. “Or [US president Donald] Trump.”
Operation Iron Wall
The Israeli military offensive in the northern West Bank – which Israel called “Operation Iron Wall” – began two days after the short-lived Gaza ceasefire came into effect on January 21st, 2025.
For years, Israel has been carrying out raids there, but it said the new – intensified – offensive was necessary to ensure security in the West Bank, which far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said was being adopted as an official “war goal”.
The offensive particularly targeted three camps – Jenin refugee camp, Nur Shams, and Tulkarem camp – long seen as centres of armed resistance.
The UN recorded “helicopter gunfire, air strikes, ground force operations and the deployment of tanks for the first time since the early 2000s”.
Between January and June this year, 126 Palestinians were killed, the UN said, including 41 in Jenin, 20 in Tubas and 13 in Tulkarem governorate.
Those killed by Israeli forces in Nur Shams camp in February included Sundus Shalabi, a 20-year-old pregnant woman, along with her husband and Rahaf al-Ashqar (21), according to Israeli human rights group B’tselem.
Since the beginning of 2023, at least 1,182 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, including at least 242 children, UN figures show. The vast majority were killed by live ammunition and by Israeli forces. Over the same period, at least 82 Israelis have been killed there, including 29 soldiers.
A spokesperson from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the camps in the northern West Bank had become “hubs of terrorism, with militants operating from within civilian neighbourhoods”.
Most of the civilian population left “as a result of the activity of the armed Palestinian terrorist groups” which, in the Jenin area specifically, followed an operation by the Palestinian Authority against them,” the spokesperson said.
While they said it does not “evacuate” the population, “the IDF has allowed local residents who wish to distance themselves from combat areas to leave safely through designated crossings ... so that residents can return to their homes once the security operation is completed”.
The spokesperson said the IDF has also allowed residents to go back to collect belongings, though did not answer questions as to when it will be possible for them to fully return.
Photos of ‘martyrs’
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank feel they are caught in a bind, further than ever from their own functional Palestinian state, but similarly far from equal rights in a single state where they would not be subjected to the oppression and humiliations that accompany a military occupation.
While many believe peaceful resistance has not worked, they argue armed resistance provides a justification or pretext for Israeli forces to increase violence and abuses.
Under international law “the population in [an] occupied territory does not have any duty of allegiance to the occupying power,” said Eitan Diamond, who manages the Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Centre in Jerusalem, last year. “From their perspective, the occupant is an alien power that seized control of their territory through force of arms.”
However, though some armed resistance is legal, it must be “undertaken in a lawful manner”, which means not attacking civilians, for example, and keeping to “military objectives”.
Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem has warned that “any trigger” could cause what they determine to be a genocide in Gaza to spread to the West Bank, or other areas under Israeli control.
Already, the old city of Nablus is lined with photos of “martyrs” – men, and sometimes children – killed by Israeli forces.
They are visible along walls and on a clock tower outside the Al Nasr Mosque, which Israeli forces raided earlier this year, before setting parts of it on fire.
Some were members of the Lion’s Den, a militant group founded by young men in Nablus a few years ago, which carried out attacks on soldiers, checkpoints and near settlements. It gained support among young Palestinians through militants sharing videos on social media, including TikTok.
As in Tulkarem and Jenin, which had their own local militant groups, some of which received funding from Iran – almost all of those involved with the Lion’s Den have now been killed or locked up, several Palestinians with good knowledge of the situation said.
“They were badly trained and badly organised,” said one Nablus local, who did not want to be named. “People here believe that the Israelis were hunting them like they were hunting birds ... they found all of them.”
We passed the test of patience and the world failed when it comes to democracy and human rights
The man said locals no longer counted “the numbers nor the names” of the dead. “We, the citizens of Nablus, understand this now: if you use your hand to slap the Israelis, they will use their aircrafts to destroy your neighbourhood. They are not normal and it is not equal.”
“It’s a generational genocide,” said a Palestinian academic and activist, walking through a cemetery in Nablus. He pointed out the graves of those who were killed – some of whom were militants and others civilians; some recently and others a long time ago.
“You will see a lot of kids murdered, of course no investigation, no accountability,” he said. “The Israelis touched every house, every family ... History did not start on October 7th.”
Regular raids
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is unpopular among many Palestinians, who say the current crises could not have developed without what they perceive as its co-operation and failures.
“The PA [has] discouraged any kind of resistance, even emotional resistance,” commented one Nablus resident. While it is regularly accused of corruption and inefficiency, the PA has also been accused of collaboration and co-ordination with Israeli forces to destroy armed Palestinian groups.
Sitting in his office, Ghassan Daghlas, the governor of Nablus, denied these charges. “Of course not,” he said.
The 53-year-old said that they have no capacity to stop Israeli forces from entering the city to conduct regular raids, despite it being officially designated as Area A, meaning it should be under full PA control.
One Israeli raid, aimed at arresting an injured individual inside a hospital, took place while The Irish Times was there. “Israel is a very strong country and we have limited weapons,” Daghlas said.
Daghlas said he opposes armed resistance, as instructed by his leadership: “We have a leadership, any country in the world has a leadership and the leader, if he decides war then it’s war.”
He said they have realised that “if you’re going to wage a war without any support you’re going to fail” and so their current commitment is to “peaceful resistance”.
He said they do not want what has happened in Gaza to happen in the West Bank too.
As he spoke, in front of the municipality building, the Palestine Red Crescent Society was carrying out a blood drive for Gaza – though medics admitted they did not know whether Israeli forces would allow them to let all of the blood enter the besieged enclave.
“We don’t like violence, but on the other side we want the world to talk about human rights,” said Daghlas.
“The United Nations, other international institutions, they should support justice and punish injustice. But what’s going on in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the world is standing with aggression.
“We passed the test of patience and the world failed when it comes to democracy and human rights. When they keep silent ... they fail the test. When you don’t talk, when you don’t do any act you’re silent and that gives Israel an excuse to move forward with their aggression against us.”
The wider Nablus governorate has a population of more than half a million people, says Daghlas, who took over his role early last year. He said the area is now “under a big siege without an excuse” which has “destroyed our life”.
This includes students prevented from attending university because of Israeli military checkpoints, which are also strangling the economy, he said. The Irish Times witnessed lengthy queues in front of one checkpoint, at an exit to the city.
“Nablus is the economic capital of Palestine ... We talk about factories, institutions. Once you close it under siege then you destroy everything,” said Daghlas.
The IDF said any claim that it “intentionally intends to constrict the everyday lives of Palestinians is entirely unfounded” and that its forces “operate under a complex security reality, where terrorists embed themselves within the civilian population and establish their terror infrastructure in towns and villages. Accordingly, there are dynamic checkpoints and ongoing efforts to monitor movement in various areas of the region, in order to maintain the security of the area”.
It said its military constantly works “to keep crossings open, in order to enable as normal a routine as possible in the area”.
It also called the accusation that “generational genocide” has been committed in the West Bank as “unfounded and entirely baseless”.
Almost 60 Palestinian villages around the city are under regular attack by settlers, Daghlas said. “When you prevent people from going to the hospitals for health services this is also a big problem. And we talk about refugee camps, we talk about unemployment, people with no jobs for almost two years”
We are not asking for weapons, we don’t want weapons, we don’t want war
He said it is important to understand that “this kind of occupation is a replacement occupation ... They brought here [Jewish] people from all over [the world] and they want to kick us out ... They are a forceful occupation and they’re looking for excuses to destroy Nablus, like what happened in Jenin and Tulkarem.”
He said he spent months in Israeli prison in the past, as had his brothers and nephew. One brother was shot in the neck; a nephew had “15 bullets” in his body. “This is an example of a [Palestinian] family, everybody’s is like this,” Daghlas said.
He supports legislation – like Ireland’s proposed Occupied Territories Bill – which would ban trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The settlements, home to around half a million settlers, are considered illegal under international law.
“Israeli settlements are illegal ... so anything that comes out of the settlements is illegal,” said Daghlas. “At the end, this is a humanitarian issue ... When you’re punishing Israel, that means humanity wins. We are not asking for weapons, we don’t want weapons, we don’t want war. But we want [Israel] to stop its aggression and war in Gaza and the West Bank and we want the whole world to put pressure on Israel to stop this.”
Homes marked for demolition
After the Israeli military pushed Palestinians out of their homes in the northern West Bank earlier this year, they began to destroy them.
In Jenin refugee camp, at least 169 homes were marked for demolition between March 21st and June 9th “in preparation for new military routes,” according to analysis by Forensic Architecture, a research group based at Goldsmiths, the University of London.
It said satellite imagery also suggested that “numerous buildings which did not receive a demolition order were nevertheless destroyed by that time” – a pattern that also unfolded in Tulkarem.
In May, more than 100 homes were marked for demolition, spread between Nur Shams and Tulkarem camp.
[Living in] Nur Shams and every camp was a hard life but not like these days, it’s getting harder.
The Irish Times saw clear destruction while driving beside Tulkarem camp, though locals advised that it was not safe to stop there or to enter, because of the risk of being targeted by Israeli forces. Irish diplomats were among a delegation who were shot at near the Jenin camp earlier this year.
In a statement, the IDF said it was “working to reshape and stabilise the region” in order “to prevent the return and entrenchment of terrorists” based “on the operational needs of forces operating in the field”.
“The decision to demolish the structures was made with careful consideration and based on operational necessity ... All of the buildings received demolition orders and the procedure was carried out according to the law.”
The spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether compensation will be paid.
“They restarted the Nakba, they’re killing people, they displaced people,” said Bilal, a resident of Nur Shams camp, who works for Palestinian human rights organisation Al Haq. He asked to be identified by a pseudonym for his own safety.
Bilal’s two-floor family home has already been demolished by the Israeli military. An Israeli drone loudly buzzed above the other family property he now lives in as he spoke.
Bilal said the militancy in Nur Shams was mostly “self-defence,” with locals shooting M-16 rifles or throwing stones when raids happened.
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“They kill us. They raid the town, they kill the people without any reason so they do self-defence.” But now, everyone who “defended” the camp was dead, he said. “They killed them all, there’s no one left.”
Bilal spoke about the “normal life” that Palestinians around him dream of enjoying one day. He suspected the home he now sat in would soon be seized too.
He felt nostalgic, as well, for their life in Nur Shams before this year.
“It was a happy life, it was beautiful. The people were going to work, the students going to their schools, universities, and the families are happy,” he said. “[The Israelis] were killing people but not like these days ... [Living in] Nur Shams and every camp was a hard life but not like these days, it’s getting harder. We hope the war and the raids will stop.”
