Israel’s forced displacement of over 33,000 Palestinians in the West Bank could be considered a “crime against humanity” and may involve “ethnic cleansing,” according to a UN report.
The report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said Israeli military, police, and other forces deployed in Operation Iron Wall killed civilians, destroyed hundreds of homes, damaged roads and infrastructure, cut off water and electricity, and forced residents to leave door to door.
It said that Israeli actions sparked the “largest and longest displacement crisis in the West Bank since 1967,” the year Israel captured the territory.
Operation Iron Wall, which was led by the Israel Defence Forces, is separate from the attacks carried out by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, which have rapidly accelerated in recent months.
Last month, Human Rights Watch warned that settler attacks are increasingly driving the forced displacement of Palestinian communities, with dozens at risk of erasure.
Since January 2023, escalating attacks by Israeli settlers have fully or partly displaced 107 communities, alongside unprecedented settlement expansion.
The report says settlers who carry out attacks often have financial, material, and legal support from the Israeli state. These attacks often happen with Israeli army units present or with soldiers nearby.
It urged countries to impose targeted sanctions on those implicated in ongoing grave abuses, suspend arms transfers to Israel, ban trade with illegal settlements, and consider suspending preferential trade agreements with Israel.
“Crime against humanity of forcible transfer”
The OHCHR report said: ”The large-scale, long-term and systematic displacement of over 33,000 Palestinian refugees from refugee camps such as Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm during Israel’s Operation Iron Wall also raises serious concerns of the crime against humanity of forcible transfer.”
The 27-page report covers events from December 5, 2024, to January 31, 2026.
During the period covered by the report, Israeli forces killed about 102 Palestinians, including 21 children. This made up 46% of all killings by Israeli forces in the West Bank during that time.
By October 2025, 52% of buildings in the Jenin refugee camp, 48% in Nur Shams, and 36% in Tulkarm had been destroyed or damaged during the Israeli operation.
“A few days into Operation Iron Wall, Israeli security forces consolidated their control over the Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps and forcibly displaced their population in their entirety,” said the report.
It added: “The documented use of airstrikes, armoured bulldozers and controlled detonations, to render entire camps uninhabitable, to force the displacement of their residents and to prevent their return, in the absence of imperative military necessity to justify such destruction and displacement, are not permissible under international law, appear to amount to collective punishment and raise concerns of ethnic cleansing.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said: “The way Operation Iron Wall has been conducted suggests its aim was to expel as many Palestinians as possible and to make way for more illegal Israeli settlements, in further violation of international law.”
“Israel must end its 59-year occupation of Palestinian territory and halt any efforts to forcibly displace more Palestinians and to further break the contiguity of a future Palestinian state. It must take steps to comply with its obligations under international law, as clarified by the International Court of Justice’s explicit conclusion – already more than two years ago – that it must end its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible.”
