RAMALLAH (Dispatches) -- On the first day of Ramadan, Israeli military bulldozers entered the Nour Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, demolishing homes and tearing up roads in the Al-Manshiya neighborhood.
Nihad al-Shawish, head of the Nour Shams camp’s Popular Committee, told Anadolu that “several military bulldozers stormed the Al-Manshiya neighborhood, destroying roads and demolishing parts of residential buildings.”
He added that Israeli forces forced residents in the vicinity of the Nour Shams camp area to evacuate, claiming they were preparing for “large-scale detonations.”
“The army has ordered all residents of the camp to leave,” Shawish said.
The military assault on Nour Shams has now entered its 21st day, while Zionist forces have been targeting northern West Bank cities, particularly Jenin and Tulkarem, for over a month as part of an ongoing military offensive, killing at least 64 people and displacing thousands.
On Feb. 23, Israeli tanks entered the Jenin refugee camp in a military escalation not seen since 2002.
Palestinian authorities have warned that the continued military offensive is part of a broader plan by Netanyahu’s government to annex the West Bank and declare sovereignty over it, which could officially mark the end of the two-state solution.
The raids were the latest in the military escalation in the West Bank, where at least 927 Palestinians have been martyred and nearly 7,000 injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers since the start of the onslaught against the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The International Court of Justice declared in July that Israel’s long-standing occupation of Palestinian territories is “unlawful,” demanding the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem