The court's order, issued on Sunday, asks the government to set out when residents of the three camps can go back. The camps were emptied during a military operation called "Iron Wall", launched on January 21, 2025, initially at Jenin and expanded a week later to Tulkarem and Nur Shams. The United Nations says Israeli forces forcibly displaced the entire populations of the camps in January and February 2025 and continue to prevent their return.
Data from UNRWA, cited in a report on the destruction of Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank, put the number of people still displaced at 33,362. By October 2025, 52 percent of structures in Jenin camp, 48 percent in Nur Shams and 36 percent in Tulkarem had been destroyed or damaged. Hundreds of homes, roads and infrastructure, including water and electricity networks, were affected, and humanitarian aid to the camps has been cut off. The report said Israeli forces killed 102 Palestinians, including 21 children, in the camps during the period covered, accounting for 46 percent of all Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in that time.
The ruling has drawn immediate opposition from within the government. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich rejected it, warning that the return of residents could allow the reconstruction of what he termed "terror infrastructure", and called on the government not to implement the decision. Defence Minister Israel Katz also opposed the court's intervention, asserting that the army's continued presence in the camps was a security decision and stating his intention to maintain a military presence there.
Among those waiting is Fuad Abu Salam, 42, a greenhouse installer who lived with his extended family in a two-storey building of four 300-square-metre apartments in Tulkarem camp. He now shares a rented flat of no more than 100 square metres in the Thinnabeh suburb with his wife, four children and mother, and spends his mornings gazing at the camp in the distance, where his home was partially destroyed when he left. He and his neighbours carried with them the hope of returning home.