Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that IDF troops will remain deployed to northern West Bank refugee camps at least until the end of the year, committing to the continuation of Israeli military presence in the densely populated Palestinian towns for several more months.
Meanwhile Israeli security forces said they had arrested three West Bank residents who had been planning a major terror attack in Israel, as well as attacks on security forces in the West Bank.
In January, the military launched an offensive against terror operatives in the northern West Bank. The offensive, dubbed “Operation Iron Wall,” began in the Jenin refugee camp, adjacent to the city of Jenin, and later expanded to include refugee camps near the city of Tulkarem in the western West Bank — the Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps.
The offensive followed a spike in West Bank violence, following October 7, 2023. Since the Hamas onslaught, troops have arrested some 6,000 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 2,350 affiliated with Hamas.
According to Katz, the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams camps were hotbeds of terror, funded, and armed by Iran, to act as another front against Israel.
There are 20 historical refugee camps in the West Bank, all of which were established shortly after 1948, housing Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the War of Independence from homes located in what is now the State of Israel. Over the years, these camps have evolved into densely populated and enclosed neighborhoods.
In the past eight months, Katz said, the IDF has carried out an “intensive” offensive, during which residents of the camps were evacuated, gunmen were killed, and infrastructure used by terror groups were destroyed.
“The IDF will remain inside the camps at this stage, at least until the end of the year, under my directives,” Katz said in his statement.
Defense Minister Israel Katz is seen with troops in the West Bank’s Tulkarem refugee camp, February 21, 2025. (Ariel Hermoni/Defense Ministry)
“Today, there is no terror in the camps, and the scope of terror alerts in Judea and Samaria [West Bank] has dropped by 80 percent,” he added.
In May, the military reported that it had killed over 100 terror operatives and arrested around 320 wanted suspects, seizing approximately 450 weapons in the northern West Bank. The IDF has not updated its figures since then, but operations have continued.
In the same month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that approximately 40,000 people had been displaced from the camps by the IDF operations and relocated to nearby villages or the adjacent cities of Jenin or Tulkarem.
In July, UNRWA said that mass displacement in the West Bank had hit levels not seen since the start of Israel’s military control of the Palestinian territory nearly 60 years ago, claiming that “about 30,000 Palestinians remain forcibly displaced.”
Palestinian women carry their belongings as Israeli soldiers enforce an evacuation order on a house in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on July 8, 2025. (Jaafar ASHTIYEH / AFP)
During the same period, Israeli security forces issued demolition orders for about 1,400 homes in the northern West Bank, a UN spokesman said, describing the figures as “alarming.”
Terror suspects arrested
Also on Sunday, police officers and Shin Bet agents nabbed three people, including a father and son, suspected of plotting attacks against Israeli civilians and security forces.
The suspects — all currently in custody — planned to stage a bombing attack at a checkpoint in northern Jerusalem, assassinate someone they believed to be an Israeli Air Force pilot, and shoot up a nightclub in central Israel, police said.
A senior police investigator told Ynet that the probe represents “one of the most serious cases we’ve handled in the unit,” saying the arrest of the three suspects prevented a mass casualty attack.
Explosives seized during a raid on an apartment that police say was used by a Palestinian father and son to plan terror attacks, photo published August 10, 2025. (Israel Police/Courtesy)
The investigation was opened after the father, who resides with his son in Kufr Aqab in East Jerusalem, reached out to an undercover cop with an offer to sell him explosives meant for terror attacks.
The father and son had been employed as cooks at a restaurant and a retirement home in central Israel, according to Ynet.
The outlet reported that the father is an Arab Muslim who married and had a son with a Jewish Israeli woman. The two have since divorced. The detained son, Jewish by virtue of his mother, reportedly converted to Islam after he was disqualified from serving in the IDF for reasons that remain unclear.
The pair was arrested by the Jerusalem District Police’s Investigations and Intelligence unit in late June. Officers seized bombmaking components, ammunition and ready-to-use pipe bombs when raiding apartments that the two had stayed in, police said.
The third suspect, a resident of East Jerusalem in his 20s, was arrested on suspicion of preparing explosives with the father and hiding them in his home. He also planned to attack security forces, officials allege.
A prosecutor’s declaration was filed against the three, and they will be charged with security offenses in the coming days, law enforcement announced.
Abdallah Atiyat (Facebook)
Arab Israeli man said killed by IDF
In another development in the West Bank, an Arab Israeli man from Nazareth was shot dead by IDF troops in the city of Jericho on Saturday night, local Arab outlets reported on Sunday.
Abdallah Atiyat, 24, had been visiting his aunt in Jericho over the weekend when he was shot in the head amid clashes during an army raid in the city’s downtown area, according to the Arab Israeli radio station Radio Shams.
In an interview with the station, Atiyat’s mother, Amina, said that her son had been struggling to get back to Nazareth amid widespread closures due to the raid. He was reportedly killed while searching for a taxi to take him home.
He was taken in critical condition to a hospital in Jericho, then shuttled to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, where he succumbed to his wounds.
Responding to a request for comment, the IDF told The Times of Israel that its forces had been operating in the Jericho region Saturday night, when Atiyat was killed.
IDF troops conduct a raid in Jericho, March 1, 2023. (Flash90/File)
During the army operation, IDF forces “identified a suspect approaching them who posed a threat. The forces fired at the suspect, a hit was identified and the incident is under investigation,” said a spokesperson.
Violence in the West Bank has spiked since the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.
According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, more than 950 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops, or terrorists carrying out attacks.
During the same period, 53 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another eight members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
