The Ghanem family, uprooted last year when Israeli forces demolished homes in longstanding refugee camps, now live in fragile conditions that offer scant protection from the near-daily sight and sound of rockets overhead. Their one-room shelter has a thin metal roof and provides little defense against falling debris as tensions have escalated since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.
They are part of an estimated 32,000 people displaced when Israel’s military forced residents from homes in three longstanding refugee camps in the occupied West Bank. The demotions and expulsions began in early 2025 during a brief truce in fighting with Hamas in Gaza, when operations in Tulkarm camp, the Nur Shams camp and the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank included the demolition of houses and roadways.
More than 270 pieces of missile debris have fallen on the West Bank since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence rescue service, a figure that has heightened already precarious living conditions for families who have lost their homes and livelihoods. While shelters are widely available in Israel, the West Bank has virtually none, leaving displaced people with limited options to seek refuge.
"The children were terrified by the sound of the rockets," said Madleen Ghanem, who lives with children aged three, eight, 11 and 14 in the single-room shack. Her older children live elsewhere. Madleen described a day-to-day routine in which the same cramped space where her family eats and sleeps is also the only place they can hide during alerts and missile activity.
Although Iran has not been reported to deliberately target Palestinian territories, the rising exchanges between Iran, Israel and other actors have had direct consequences for civilians in the West Bank. Four Palestinian women were killed last month when an Iranian missile hit the West Bank town of Hebron. The Ghanems and others now contend with both the psychological impact of frequent rocket sounds and the physical danger from falling debris.
Israel’s military said its operations in the camps were necessary to demolish civilian infrastructure to prevent its exploitation by militants. Human Rights Watch, however, described the expulsions in a report published last year as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Some leaders from Israel’s ruling coalition have repeatedly advocated for Israel to annex the West Bank - a territory roughly 100 km (60 miles) long that Palestinians view as central to a future independent state. Israel cites historical and biblical ties to the West Bank, which it captured during a 1967 war.
The Ghanems’ personal history mirrors the wider displacements. The family had lived in a three-storey house in the crowded Tulkarm camp where women in the household had tended trees, flowers and vines along their verandas for decades. Areej Ghanem, Madleen’s sister-in-law, recounted Israeli soldiers breaking into their home without warning one night last year.
"We didn’t take clothes, nothing at all. They made us leave. Our father can’t get up or down...He’s an old man, he can’t walk. We left, dragging him," Areej said. After their house was razed like many others in the camp, Areej, her sister and her niece moved with their father, Mahmoud Ghanem, 89, into a small rented room in the nearby town of Tulkarm. The room lacks a kitchen, and Areej washes dishes in the bathroom. She is the family’s sole earner, working as a maid, and says limited income has meant they have not been able to afford meat for more than a year.
"Honestly I have no hope for the future. We can’t even provide basic food," Areej said.
Madleen, her husband Ibrahim - who is Areej’s brother - and their children now live in another part of Tulkarm where they had purchased a small plot in 2023 before the Gaza war began. Ibrahim had worked as a construction worker and was among thousands of Palestinians who held permits to cross into Israel for employment. After Hamas-led attacks in 2023 that sparked the Gaza war, Israel revoked many work permits and Ibrahim has been unemployed since.
With limited earnings and rising insecurity, the family at times cannot afford cooking gas and resorts to cooking over an outdoor fire. Despite living about an hour’s walk apart, the relatives try to gather weekly to recreate a sense of normality and maintain family ties.
At a dusty roadside playground on a recent Friday, Areej and Madleen spread a picnic blanket over worn synthetic turf while their children played nearby. Madleen said she dreams of completing the house they began to rebuild and hopes the family can one day reunite under one roof. Areej framed their current aim simply: to remain together.
"Either we die together or we live joyfully together," she said.
Requests for comment to Israel’s military about the broader expulsions and the Ghanems’ case did not receive immediate responses.
Contextual note: The facts in this article reflect the experiences of the displaced family and reported figures from the Palestinian Civil Defence rescue service, as well as public statements and reports by the parties referenced.