The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has raised the alarm over escalating destruction, forced displacement, and settler violence across the northern occupied West Bank, warning that entire refugee camps have been emptied and residents barred from returning.

According to Roland Friedrich, UNRWA’s Director of Affairs for the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams have been completely evacuated, with Israeli forces actively preventing displaced residents from returning to their homes.

“Destruction and forced displacement persist,” Friedrich said, describing a deteriorating situation in which “settler violence and settlement expansion have spiralled, pushing vulnerable Palestinian communities from their lands amid increasingly coercive conditions – paving the way for annexation.”

UNRWA also condemned recent Israeli legislative actions targeting the agency, noting that anti-UNRWA laws have forced the closure of UN-run schools and led to the de facto eviction of international staff from the West Bank. These measures, the agency warned, are undermining humanitarian operations and jeopardizing access to education for thousands of Palestinian children.

Friedrich stressed that the fates of Gaza and the West Bank are inseparable, warning that any drawdown of military operations in Gaza “should not become an opportunity to tighten the grip of occupation elsewhere.”

Despite mounting challenges, he reaffirmed that UNRWA “has remained on the ground to stay and deliver throughout this escalation, as we have throughout multiple crises before.”

As discussions over a fragile ceasefire in Gaza continue, UNRWA expressed readiness to work with all stakeholders to secure “a comprehensive outcome that can form the cornerstone of peace and stability for the entirety of the occupied Palestinian territory, and for the region, for generations to come.”