I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
The Israeli military has intensified its military operations across Gaza, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Tuesday, citing its correspondents in the Strip, as the IDF continues its constant violations of the US-backed ceasefire deal.
The report said that the ramped-up
activity included the large-scale demolition of homes and civilian
infrastructure in the eastern and northeastern areas of the southern
city of Khan Younis. In the nearby city of Rafah, WAFA reported heavy artillery shelling and gunfire toward Khan Younis.
In Gaza City, the report said that
“Israeli forces detonated a booby-trapped robot loaded with a large
quantity of explosives, targeting homes in the Tuffah neighborhood in
the northeast of the city” and that there was also “heavy gunfire from
military vehicles” in the area and “sporadic explosions.”
Mourners
attend the funeral of Palestinian woman Diana Abu Daraz and her
one-year-old daughter, Sewar, who were killed in an Israeli strike on
tents, according to medics, outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in
the southern Gaza Strip, June 30, 2026. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
The news agency also reported that at least two people were killed by an Israeli airstrike near Khan Younis and multiple people were injured by Israeli attacks in Gaza City.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its daily update that it recorded the
Israeli killing of at least eight Palestinians and the injury of 26.
In recent days, Israeli forces have killed multiple children,
including a one-year-old girl who was killed alongside her mother in an
airstrike targeting a tent in southern Gaza. Palestinians held a
funeral for the child and her mother at the Nasser Hospital in Khan
Younis on Tuesday.
The escalation in Israeli attacks comes as
the IDF has been taking more territory in Gaza, a clear violation of
the ceasefire deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month
that he ordered the Israeli military to take 70% of Gaza’s territory,
up from 60%, and Israeli military officials said last week that the IDF
has achieved that goal.
Since the so-called ceasefire deal was
signed, the Health Ministry has recorded the Israeli killing of 1,053
Palestinians and the injury of 3,406. “A number of victims are still
under the rubble and in the streets, as ambulance and civil defense
crews have been unable to reach them so far,” the ministry wrote on
Telegram.
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Israeli
soldiers deployed in Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank
look on as displaced Palestinians granted temporary permits retrieve
belongings from their destroyed or heavily damaged homes on June 21,
2026. Photo by Aseel Mfarajeh.
JENIN, Occupied West Bank—It took Omar
Qalib more than a decade to finish his family’s three-story house in
Jouret al-Dahab, a neighborhood in the heart of the Jenin refugee camp. A
construction worker, he built it himself, brick by brick. But it was
worth it, he thought. The property fell within Area A, a zone within the
occupied West Bank where the Palestinian Authority nominally controls
both civil and security affairs.
But in January 2025, Qalib was forced from
his home, along with tens of thousands of other Palestinians, as Israel
launched a large-scale military operation dubbed “Iron Wall” targeting
refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams. More than 30,000
Palestinians were forced from their homes over the ensuing months, in
the largest displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank in a single
operation since the 1967 war.
After invading and occupying the camps in
February 2025, the Israeli military campaign flattened entire
neighborhoods, turning them into wastelands. Where narrow alleys once
ran between tall buildings so close they blocked the light, wide dirt
roads now cut through the heart of the camps, carved out by Israeli
military bulldozers.
As part of the campaign, the camps have
been cordoned off. Just to see what’s left of his home, Qalib needs a
permit from the Israeli military. Few Palestinians are able to obtain
them. And the permits only grant one-time, temporary access. Two weeks
ago, Qalib was one of the lucky few who obtained a permit to visit his
destroyed home.
“The house is gone,” said Qalib “My house and my son’s house. A whole life of work, gone.”
Qalib, 56, now shares two rooms with his
wife, two adult sons and their families, packed together in a dormitory
connected to the Arab American university in the city of Jenin. “I had a
whole family in that house,” he said. “Now we are all in two rooms
waiting for something we don’t know when will end.”
Every morning Qalib heads out looking for
work as a day laborer, the principal breadwinner responsible for rent,
food, electricity, water, and transportation costs for an entire
household. Those costs have nearly doubled since they were displaced.
Both of Qalib’s sons were shot by Israeli
soldiers during the military invasion of the camp. One was left half
paralyzed, with damage to his kidney, spleen, and lung, and is unable to
work. His other son recovered from his injuries and is able to
physically work though he has been able to find a job since they left
their home, nearly a year and a half ago.
Recently, some Palestinians have been
granted limited access to enter their old neighborhoods, mainly to
scavenge in their destroyed or heavily damaged homes for items they left
behind. What they described to Drop Site are neighborhoods made
unrecognizable: men who spent their lives in these alleys wander in the
middle of emptied out dirt roads, looking for a mosque that used to mark
the turn, the building that used to anchor their route. The landmarks
are gone. Some cannot even locate where their own homes once stood.
The First Permanent Israeli Military Base in Area A Since Oslo
Alongside the large-scale destruction, the
Israeli military is engaged in unprecedented construction. In May, the
commander of Israel’s Central Command signed an order to seize land in
the city of Jenin, near the Jenin refugee camp, and construct a
permanent military base, according to documents first revealed by
Haaretz. It marked the first time since the Oslo Accords in 1993 that
the Israeli military has built a permanent post in Area A.
While the Israeli military has staged
regular incursions into cities and towns in Area A for years, despite it
technically being under Palestinian civil and security control, the
establishment of a permanent Israeli military base represents a major
shift. “The Area A designation was the foundational pillar of the
concept of Palestinian self-governance,” said Ibrahim Abras, a political
analyst and academic. “A permanent military base inside these areas
signals a shift in the nature of Israeli control, a gradual transition
from managing the conflict through temporary incursions to imposing a
long-term field presence that raises serious questions about the future
legal and political status of these areas.”
Putting a base in Jenin is “a mechanism
for reshaping control over the land,” said Ismat Mansour, a specialist
in Israeli affairs. “A permanent base near Jenin gives Israel far
greater leverage over the security and political landscape of the entire
region.”
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of
Palestinians in the West Bank remain displaced from their homes, with no
legal justification offered for blocking their return, according to ACRI,
the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which has described the
situation as a systematic violation of the rights of an entire displaced
population.
In late March, the Israeli security cabinet secretly approved 34
settlements across the West Bank, including six of them that form a
ring around Jenin. It marked the largest number of settlements and
outposts approved by any Israeli government at one time.
“Many of the current settlements began as
military positions or outposts before being converted into permanent
civilian communities,” said Khalil Tufakji, a settlements expert who has
spent decades mapping the relationship between military infrastructure
and settlement expansion.
The pattern, said Tufakji, is not new.
“Reactivating evacuated outposts in the northern West Bank
simultaneously with a permanent military base demands a wider reading
about the future of the entire area.”
The establishment and fortification of new
Israeli settlements comes in parallel with the all but total
restriction of permits for Palestinians to return to their homes. To
enter a refugee camp a Palestinian was born in, grew up in, and
subsequently displaced from, now requires Israeli military
authorization. Palestinians who have managed to obtain a permit describe
it as a one-time authorization that comes with no guarantee it will be
granted again. The displacement has effectively become permanent.
Israeli
soldiers deployed in Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank
look on as displaced Palestinians granted temporary permits retrieve
belongings from their destroyed or heavily damaged homes on June 21,
2026. Photo by Aseel Mfarajeh.
“When will we go back to our house?”
Um Faris, 42, left Nur Shams camp in January 2025 with her five children, each carrying a piece of home in their hands.
Faris, 17, carried a small bag with the
family’s documents. His mother warned him not to lose it no matter what.
The younger children each held onto something too: Ahmed, 14, keeps
photos of the camp on his phone and spends hours looking at them. Layan,
8, brought a small cloth doll, the last piece of her old room. She goes
to sleep every night holding it.
They left a big house with a backyard and
now live in a small rented apartment with thin walls on the outskirts of
Tulkarm. Before being displaced, her husband worked in construction.
The road closures and movement restrictions ended that. Faris was forced
to drop out of school to find work; he has stopped talking about
finishing school and going to university. His younger siblings also
eventually dropped out because they were unable to attend classes as a
result of the severe restrictions on movement imposed by the Israeli
army.
Um Faris has documents proving ownership
of her home. But she does not have the permit to enter the area where it
once stood. She’s not sure what is even left of it. Every morning, her
youngest child asks the same question: “When will we go back to our
house?”
In Fahma, south of Jenin, 35-year-old
Ahmed lives in a rented house with his family. He declined to give his
last name for fear of Israeli retribution. Six of them share just two
rooms, a space half the size of the home they left in the Jenin camp.
The family shop that provided part of their household income is gone.
Lately rents have been rising, and humanitarian assistance is being
reduced. With no stable income, covering rent, food, and other household
expenses has become a daily struggle.
Ahmed keeps the key to his old house in
his pocket, hoping to return. On one of the rare occasions when he was
briefly granted access, Ahmed walked through the alleys he grew up in.
Or, he tried to. “I thought I knew every
stone,” he said. “But I felt like a stranger. The streets I had
memorized were gone. Buildings that had been fixed points in my memory
had disappeared. Entire neighborhoods looked like they had been erased.”
“The continued prevention of thousands of
Palestinians from returning to their camps for months creates a new
reality on the ground,” said Ashraf al-Akka, a political analyst. “The
social and economic fabric begins to break down gradually while physical
changes inside the emptied areas continue. The prolonged displacement
cannot be separated from broader Israeli policies aimed at reshaping
Palestinian geography in the West Bank.”
Worse yet, the periodic orders forcing
displacement show no signs of stopping. In Qalandia and other camps
across the West Bank, multiple residents told Drop Site that Israeli
soldiers used loudspeakers to blare out a chilling warning during raids:
“Prepare yourselves. What happened in Jenin and Tulkarm will happen to
you.”
This story was reported and produced in collaboration with Egab.
