Date: 16/12/2025
The PLO's Refugee Affairs Department condemned the Israeli occupation authorities' decision to demolish 25 residential buildings in the Nur Shams refugee camp.
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The PLO's Refugee Affairs Department called on the international community to intervene urgently to stop the Israeli occupation authorities' decision to demolish 25 residential buildings in the Nur Shams refugee camp, which is scheduled to begin on December 18. The department also called for allowing all displaced persons to return to their camps in the northern West Bank, enabling UNRWA to carry out its work and rebuild the camps, and protecting Palestinian refugee camps from ethnic cleansing and forced displacement.
The Department condemned in its statement issued today (Tuesday) the decision by the occupation authorities to demolish 25 residential buildings in the Nur Shams refugee camp, which constitutes a war crime and ethnic cleansing, and a violation of international humanitarian law, international conventions, relevant UN resolutions, the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The Department warned of the repercussions of the systematic demolitions in the Nur Shams camp, which will lead to the forced displacement of dozens of families outside the camp. This is part of a plan to empty Palestinian refugee camps, erase their existence, and impose long-term control over them, which falls within the broader framework of the occupation's plans to consolidate its control and annex the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The Department rejected all Israeli attempts to permanently alter the demographic and geographic character of the camps, aiming to erase their identity as places and places of reference and transform them into neighborhoods within Palestinian cities. This is intended to obliterate the legal, cultural, social, and demographic identity of Palestinian refugees, liquidate the refugee issue, eliminate the right of return, and conceal the Nakba—the crime of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement perpetrated by Israel, the occupying power, in 1948.
The Department considered the conditions imposed by the Israeli occupation authorities for their withdrawal from the Palestinian camps—which included prohibiting any activity or work by UNRWA within the camps, banning any political activity by refugees, screening displaced persons upon their return to their camps, and refusing to rebuild homes destroyed in the Nur Shams, Tulkarm, and Jenin camps—to be a continuation of the policy of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing, a violation of international humanitarian law, a challenge to international will, and a disregard for the UN system.
The department explained that the ongoing military aggression against refugee camps in the northern West Bank since the beginning of this year, the continued policy of demolishing Palestinian refugee homes in the camps, the targeting of UNRWA and preventing it from fulfilling its mandate as renewed by an overwhelming majority of member states in the UN General Assembly, and the obstruction of its work and prevention of it from providing essential services to Palestinian refugees constitute a violation of the principle of international protection for refugees, a breach of relevant UN resolutions, Security Council Resolution 2730 issued in May 2024, and the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice issued last October, which obligates the occupying power to cooperate with UNRWA and enable it to carry out its mandate and humanitarian work.
The department called on the international community to activate its commitment to the principle of accountability, to immediately comply with the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice regarding the implementation of UNRWA's mandate, and to respect the immunities and privileges enjoyed by the agency, which guarantee the facilitation of its work within the camps in accordance with the mandate issued by the UN General Assembly in Resolution 302.
