Category World News

The Israeli military’s forced displacement of Palestinians from three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank earlier this year amounts to war crimes and a crime against humanity, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

In a 105-page report released on Thursday, the rights group said the Israeli military forced 32, 000 Palestinians out of their homes in the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps, starting in January of this year.

The forced evictions were carried out “without regard to international legal protections”, and Israel has not allowed residents to return, said Nadia Hardman, a senior refugee and migrant rights researcher at HRW.

Satellite images also showed that more than 850 homes and other buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged across the three refugee camps that were targeted by the Israeli military, the report said.

“With global attention focused on Gaza, Israeli forces have carried out war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank that should be investigated and prosecuted”, Hardman said.

The report comes as Palestinians across the West Bank have faced a wave of intensified Israeli military and settler violence in the shadow of Israel’s Gaza war, which has killed more than 69, 000 people in the coastal enclave since October 2023.

Members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government have also been pushing to formally annex the West Bank, which experts say is already under a system of de facto annexation and apartheid.

Rights groups have been warning for months that Palestinians in the West Bank faced a heightened risk of ethnic cleansing amid the violence.

“Over the past few years, we have seen the impact of the Israeli forces and settlers exerting increased force and control over the Palestinian people”, Simona Onidi, a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) project coordinator in Jenin and Tulkarem, said in September.

“These actions are entrenched in the broader settler-colonial process, where the risk of ethnic cleansing – through the forced removal of Palestinian communities – will cement permanent demographic change”, Onidi said.

‘ They were all crying ‘

The Israeli authorities have said the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams camp raids aimed to root out Palestinian armed groups and to dismantle infrastructure from which attacks on Israeli forces could be carried out.

“The operation was based on the understanding that terrorists exploit the terrain and the densely built environment of the camps, which restricts the]military’s] freedom of action”, the Israeli army said in a statement to HRW.

But the rights group said in Thursday’s report that the military failed to demonstrate “a presence in the three refugee camps of military objectives, namely Palestinian fighters and military arms and supplies, that would justify the forced displacement of the entire population of the camps”.

It also said Israel, as the occupying power in the West Bank, had failed to meet its obligations under international law to evacuate civilians safely and then allow them to return to their homes once hostilities end.

Displaced Palestinians reported that they were given just minutes to leave the camps, often under threats of violence, and that they had witnessed wide-scale destruction.

A Palestinian woman referred to as Nour H in the report said she and her relatives were told they had 10 minutes to leave Nur Shams refugee camp during the Israeli military’s raid in early February.

“I asked the soldiers where we should go, and they said to the east, and they told us if you go to the left or to the right, you will be targeted by snipers who are in high places around the area”, the mother of five recalled.

Another Nur Shams resident, Nadine G, told HRW that she “couldn’t recognise the camp” as she was forced out with her family because so many homes had been destroyed.

“There were more than 40 men, and maybe 45 women with their children walking with us at the same time from my neighbourhood. As we were walking, drones were following us overhead and there were maybe 20 to 25 soldiers, aiming guns at us”, she said.

“We were meeting women along the way who had also been forced to leave, and they were all crying”.

HRW calls for investigation

Meanwhile, HRW has called for senior Israeli military and political officials to be investigated over the alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity that took place in the three refugee camps.

That includes Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Defence Minister Israel Katz, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and Major General Avi Bluth, who oversees the Israeli military’s central command.

The rights group also urged third-party countries to impose sanctions against those individuals.

“They should take other actions to press Israeli authorities to end their repressive policies”, HRW said, including imposing an arms embargo against Israel and enforcing International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants.

Numerous international news outlets claim that the US and Russia have come up with a new strategy to end the Russian-Ukraine conflict.

Under the plan, which covers 28 points, Kyiv would be required to concede weapons and territory.

The news comes one day before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is due to meet US army officials in Kyiv on Thursday.

What we currently know about the plan and what concessions Kyiv would have to make.

Is this a formal proposal, or not?

No. Russia has even refuted the existence of such a peace plan, and the US has not yet made an official announcement about it.

However, unnamed sources have been cited in reports from a number of news outlets. US digital news outlet Axios and the United Kingdom’s Financial Times newspaper were the first to report details of the plan on Wednesday.

The US has “signalled” to Zelenskyy, according to two unnamed sources with knowledge of the situation who later obtained a Reuters quote from a source close to the investigation. According to other reports, this would be exchanged for US security guarantees.

The Financial Times quoted an unnamed official saying the proposal is “heavily tilted towards Russia” and “very comfortable for]Russian President Vladimir] Putin”. The official’s name is not specified. According to the Financial Times, the plan’s authors claimed that only Russian and US officials had been involved in the process.

The newspaper added that the US had informed Ukraine of the plan via Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, this week.

According to an unnamed US official with “direct knowledge,” Axios reported that the plan would grant Russia access to areas of eastern Ukraine that Moscow does not currently control in exchange for a security guarantee for Ukraine and Europe against upcoming Russian aggression.

However, according to Keir Giles, a Russian military expert at Chatham House in London, the idea may not even be from the US. He described the way news of the plan had emerged as a “Russian information operation rather than the basis of reality, which Western media has willingly bought into yet again” in an interview with Al Jazeera.

Witkoff said on Wednesday in response to a post on X with a link to the Axios story: “He must have got this from K.” The 28-point plan’s existence was not explicitly confirmed or refuted by him.

The post, which Witkoff may have “thought was a direct message” to someone else, Giles said, has since been deleted.

According to Giles, “K” could refer to Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), or Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Dmitriev is listed as one of the “architects” of the new proposal in a report from the Financial Times.

What have Ukrainian and US officials said?

The White House has not made any comment on the situation.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X that the US “will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict”.

Rubio continued, “Ending a complex and deadly war like the one in Ukraine calls for a lot of serious and realistic ideas exchange. And both parties will need to consent to difficult but necessary concessions in order to reach a lasting peace.

Zelenskyy, who was holding talks in Turkiye with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, has also not commented on the alleged proposal.

After meeting with Erdogan in Ankara, Zelenskyy said on Telegram that the key to stopping the bloodshed and achieving lasting peace is that we work together with all of our partners and that the American leadership stays strong and effective.

Only the US and Trump “have sufficient strength to finally put an end to the war,” Zelenskyy claimed.

What has been reported about the terms of the plan?

The plan includes 28 specific, unidentified points, according to Axios. Overall, it would give Russia complete control of the Donbass region, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, and Crimea in the south, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014 but which is still litigious.

In Donbas, Russia currently controls all of Luhansk and most of Donetsk. Overall, Ukraine still has control over 14.5 percent of the Donbass region, including parts of Donetsk around the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Russia would also be unable to station its troops there, making Ukraine have to completely withdraw its forces from the Donbass. This would also make the area a demilitarized zone.

Axios quoted an unnamed Ukrainian official saying the plan also imposes longer-term limits on the size of Ukraine’s military and its possession of long‑range missiles.

Russia now controls 75% of Zaporizhia and Kherson in southern Ukraine, which border the Black Sea, along with Crimea and the majority of the Donbass region. The existing battle lines in these two regions would be permanently frozen, according to the plan. The return of any of this territory to Ukraine would be subject to later negotiations.

Would Ukraine benefit from this strategy?

On the surface, analysts claimed that this strategy does not at all benefit Ukraine. “If the plan, as has been suggested to media were implemented, this would leave Ukraine defenceless against the next Russian attack”, Giles said.

He added that Ukraine would become too vulnerable if its army size was reduced and its long-range weapons were restricted. He called the strategy “catastrophic to European security.”

“It seems that Ukrainian armed forces will have to be reduced by 2.5 times]reduced by 60 percent] of its size – that means Ukraine cannot have more than 400, 000 personnel”, Marina Miron, a postdoctoral researcher at the defence studies department at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera, based on what she has read about the plan. Additionally, it states that Ukraine shouldn’t possess long-range missile capabilities capable of attacking Russia. Then Crimea and the regions under Russian control would both be officially recognized.

“This plan seems to obviously favour Russia, and it is interesting to see whether the United States can exert enough leverage on Ukraine and on Zelenskyy to accept this plan”, Miron said.

How has Trump’s position evolved over time?

Trump has flip-flopped on the issue of Ukraine ceding land to Russia several times this year.

Trump suggested late last month that Ukraine’s current battle lines be frozen, and what not.

You let it continue as it is now. They can … negotiate something later on down the line”, Trump told reporters on Air Force One in October. Russia, which has made it clear that it is determined to achieve its war goal of removing Ukraine’s military from Moscow’s eastern regions, rejected this strategy.

This plan was initially supported by Ukraine and its allies in Europe. “The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations”, they said in a joint statement. Ukraine, which had previously urged reclaiming all of its land, saw a change in this regard.

Trump’s position on the matter also changed, and on September 23 he asserted that the European Union and NATO could assist in bringing back all of its territory, which Russia had seized since the start of the war.

“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option”, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform back then.

Trump stated on August 11 that the two countries would have to renounce their respective territories in order for the war to end. He stated to reporters that Russia had taken some of Ukraine’s “very prime territory” and that it would “try to get some of that territory back.” At this point, Zelenskyy rejected the idea of conceding any land.

Trump and Zelenskyy met in the Oval Office in February of this year. Zelenskyy was berated by Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, at this meeting for not showing up enough to win the American war so far.

Trump indicated that ending the war would require Ukraine to give up some territory, telling Zelenskyy: “You should be grateful. You are trapped there, your people are dying, and you have a shortage of soldiers.

Trump vowed to end the Ukraine war in his first 24 hours of presidency, in preparation for the US election last year. Trump was inaugurated in late January this year, and about 11 months later, all his attempts at peace talks have been unsuccessful.

Since February 2022, the conflict in Ukraine has been dragging on. At least 26 people were killed and several others were hurt in a Russian aerial attack on Ternopil in western Ukraine on Wednesday, according to Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko.

What will happen next?

Miron said that because of its significant favoring of Russia, Ukraine and Europe will reject this plan if it is presented.

“Ukraine and Europe will have their own demands as we go through a second cycle of rewriting the plan.” Allegedly, Zelenskyy had a plan of his own in Turkiye which was put together with his European allies”, Miron said.

The plan will likely start a “diplomatic game,” she continued if the reports about the plan are accurate.

Trump can always say, “Well, we came with a plan to you and you rejected it,” if Ukrainians and Europeans reject the plan. And so you are in the way to achieve a lasting peace'”.