The destruction of Palestinian settlements, Western complicity and the need for global solidarity: A view from two urban refugee camps in the northern West Bank

By Rehab Nazzal and Norma M. Rantisi A previous version of this article was published in French in À bâbord!, No. 101, Fall 2024.

It is reprinted here with permission and with slight edits.

We are now over a year into a genocide enacted by Israel against the besieged and occupied Palestinian people. The genocide is an extension of over seven decades of settler colonial dispossession and apartheid inflicted on the Palestinians. During the past year, Palestinians have endured horrific loss of life, with over 44,548 documented deaths and thousands remaining under the rubble, the devastation of nearly 70% percent of Gaza’s housing stock, and the destruction of key institutions and infrastructure that sustain life, ranging from healthcare facilities to schools to sanitation, water and electricity systems. In the shadows of this obliteration and a tightening of the siege on Gaza, in the West Bank, ethnic cleansing, land grabs and violent attacks by Israel's occupation forces and armed settlers have reached unprecedented levels. In this short piece, we focus on two urban refugee camps in the northern West Bank and raise questions about the complicity of our place of residence (Quebec and Canada) in the violence inflicted on the Palestinians and highlight the critical role of the global solidarity movement in ending the settler colonial system behind this violence.  

While the world’s attention is focused on Gaza, in the West Bank, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) have intensified land expropriation, with the theft of 2370 hectares in 2024; extended illegal settlement colonies and built new outposts, leading to the displacement of 19 communities; and exacerbated the confinement and isolation of Palestinian communities through the use of iron gates and other means. Such confinement is aggravated by the increased number of checkpoints that further impede Palestinians’ mobility. The IOF and armed settlers have escalated their violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank since October 2023, leading to the murder of over 784 Palestinians, the imprisonment of over 9500 and the acceleration of house demolition. 

Although there have been near daily military raids on Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank,  the targeting of Palestnians refugee camps has been particularly vicious. The IOF routinely use D9 bulldozers and armored vehicles to invade these camps and destroy infrastructure—roads, water and sewage pipes, power lines, as well as cultural and heritage sites. The refugee camps, established  as temporary accommodations until refugees could return to the lands and homes from which they were forcibly displaced following the 1948 Nakba, have been particularly targeted in an attempt to crush refugees’ resistance and struggle for return. The IOF not only targets these camps, but also seeks to dismantle the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), which was established to oversee the camps and ensure refugees’ rights, including that of return.

In our visit to Jenin and Nur Shams refugee camps in late June and early July 2024, we witnessed  a level of destruction that has led to local residents calling these camps “small Gazas.” Jenin refugee camp, which was leveled during the Second Intifada in 2002 and subsequently rebuilt, has been repeatedly subject to IOF violence including the massacres of January and July 2023. Since last October, over 80 military raids have left the camp in ruins. Most of its inhabitants have been displaced, with their homes burnt or bombed to destruction. Although this camp sits on less than 0.5 km², it already contained two full cemeteries prior to this latest wave of violence. By January 2024, a third cemetery was constructed on a plot of land that was initially intended for the expansion of the Jenin Freedom Theatre.

In our walk through the refugee camp of Nur Shams immediately following one of Israel’s military raids, we were horrified by the scale of destruction, which included dozens of bombed or burned homes, shops, and services, including a daycare, a gym, and an UNRWA centre. Streets—including the entirety of the main street—were torn up by bulldozers. Underground water lines were punctured and water tanks were riddled with bullet holes. Posters of martyrs could be found on almost every vertical structure that remained standing. Just a week after our visit, the IOF invaded the camp again, causing even greater destruction, leaving 300 families homeless. 

During these raids, the camps are not only attacked by ground forces, armoured vehicles, and snipers, but also by helicopters and drones. The inhabitants of the camps testified that armed and surveillance drones regularly occupy their aerial space. While some of the drones emit irritating noise around the clock, others are silent and are used to assassinate Palestinians. One of the most illegal and deceitful ways that the military infiltrates Palestinian communities is through the use of “Musta’ribeen,” Israeli special units who disguise themselves as Palestinians, as was the case at the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin, where they dressed as hospital staff and civilians while carrying out a lethal raid. 

Within these conditions of confinement, surveillance and military raids, Palestinians continue to exercise their right to self-defense, using all means available. This includes the use of stones and home-made explosives, blocking streets with cement blocks and covering the narrow alleys of the camps with fabric or tarps to block the drones’ vision.

While the world watches Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, the governments of Quebec and Canada continue to be complicit in this genocide at many levels: through officials’ silence, political cover, material support (including the provision of weaponry) and by fueling anti-Palestinian racism across the country. Here in Quebec, Premier François Legault recently announced that despite the current violence, he would still move ahead with plans to operate an office in Tel Aviv that aims to strengthen ties with Israel. Quebec’s public pension plan, managed by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), is currently investing $14.2 billion in 87 companies connected to Israel, including weapons supplier Lockheed Martin. Canada has long positioned Israel as a central ally in the Middle East, and while it recently voted for a ceasefire at the UN and committed to an embargo on selling arms to Israel, it is still following through on arms contracts that were previously approved. Additionally, the embargo does not include the purchase of arms from Israel. Canada also promotes financial investments through the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA), which includes benefits to businesses in illegal West Bank settlements. Canadian tax breaks to charities that directly support illegal Israeli settlement construction are a further form of material support.

Although such complicity is not surprising given the government's own settler colonial, supremacist and imperialist practices within Turtle Island, there is a movement afoot to challenge this violent state of order. Many observers have maintained that the global Palestine solidarity movement has reached unprecedented heights in scope and scale in our time. The continuity of protests, students encampments and solidarity actions since October 2023, as well as the range of actors involved, help to expose the unjust international legal system, the complicity of most western governments in genocide, and the role of mainstream media in suppressing the Palestinian narrative and amplifying Israeli lies. This global solidarity movement aspires not only for a Free Palestine from the River to the Sea for all inhabitants of the land but also to end the broader system that continues to colonize, exploit, monopolize and destroy human and non-human lives and the environment. 

History has taught us that collective action can achieve what destructive military power cannot. For example, global solidarity with the South African struggle against the Apartheid system succeeded in pressuring states to end arms supplies to the apartheid regime and impose economic sanctions, ultimately leading to its end. 

The recent International Court of Justice ruling declaring that Israeli practices in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza are illegal and must end provides further evidence of the potential for such a movement. Our challenge, however, is to carry this struggle forward toward ongoing collective and intersectional solidarity that can sustain the current movement and serve as the foundation for justice in Palestine, Turtle Island, and beyond. 

Rehab Nazzal is a Palestinian-born multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohtiake/Montreal and Bethlehem, Palestine. Her work deals with the effects of settler-colonial violence on the bodies and minds of colonized peoples, on the land and on other non-human life. 

Norma M. Rantisi is a Palestinian-American researcher based in Tiohtiake/Montreal.  She is a professor of Urban Planning and Geography at Concordia University and a co-editor of Progressive City: Radical Alternatives online magazine.