Nothing on the night of Wednesday, August 5, suggested that the pre-dawn hours ahead would upend the life of Younis Jahjouh’s family.
It was 2:30 in the morning in the Qalandia refugee camp outside Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, when an explosion shook the four-story building as the door to his home was blown open. Within seconds, dozens of soldiers’ boots filled the house, and the rooms turned into a military staging ground. Roughly 40 Israeli soldiers stormed the building, led by a Palestinian captive, handcuffed and blindfolded, while soldiers spread through the floors searching every corner and overturning furniture.
Inside the building were Younis Jahjouh, 57, his wife Ghadeer, his 16-year-old daughter Aya, his sons Ahmad, Tamer, and Louay, his youngest son. Ghadeer and Aya were ordered to leave the house immediately. Younis and his sons were forced to hand over their phones before the male family members were herded into the house’s small bathroom, where they remained from 3 a.m. until 5 p.m.
During those fourteen hours, the house stopped being a home. Soldiers moved in and out, bringing in Palestinian captives from different neighborhoods in the camp, turning the building into a field interrogation center while its owners sat trapped in the bathroom, unaware of what was happening in the rest of their own house.
“They dragged me out of my house like an animal,” Younis told Mondoweiss. “My house that I worked so hard for. I worked as an Arabic teacher, and after my shift, at a sweets shop, and I gave private lessons — all just to give my kids a better life.”
Younis refused to let his sons speak to journalists, fearing their photographs or testimonies could become grounds for arrest in a future raid. When the Israeli soldiers finally left, the house was not returned to the family as it had been. When the Jahjouhs walked back inside, they found the house in chaos, littered with the traces of the Israeli raid.
“Is this really how the camp’s story ends?” he added, his voice weary. “We have nothing left — no [Palestinian] authority, no minister, not even the Arab states.”
Last week’s raid on the Qalandia refugee camp, which lasted 48 hours, saw dozens of local homes raided and at least 60 of people, including women and children, detained and interrogated.
According to local reports, Palestinian Red Crescent teams treated 51 people during the Israeli assault, including 38 injuries that required hospitalization, six beating-related injuries treated in the field, one injury from a rubber-coated metal bullet and six cases of gas inhalation.
The raid sent a chilling effect through the camp. It was the second such raid on Qalandia in less than a month, and came only a few days after a similar raid on Bethlehem’s Dheisheh refugee camp, during which at least 25 people were arrested.
Just one week prior to the raid, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the Israeli military to invade and occupy a new refugee camp in the West Bank and expel its residents as part of a larger military operation in the territory “to expand offensive operations against Palestinian terrorism, which is attempting to reestablish itself.”
Katz’s comments stoked widespread fear among camp residents, who until now had avoided the fate that befell the camps of the northern West Bank last year, that the Israeli military campaign would soon be at their doors.
Confirming Qalandia’s worst fears, in a report from Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, the Israeli military plans under consideration involved one of three refugee camps: Jalazone (Ramallah), Balata (Nablus), or Qalandia.
‘Where are we supposed to go?’
Omar Abu Halawa, 55, has run a sweets shop in Qalandia for years. For days leading up to last week’s raid, he and so many others in the camp, were on edge. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when, their turn would come.
Speaking to Mondoweiss, he recalls the moment he first heard Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir call for applying the destruction wrought on Beit Hanoun in Gaza, and on the refugee camps of the northern West Bank, to other Palestinian towns and villages: his face went pale, and he could not process what he was hearing.
“I stepped outside and found neighbors already talking, warning that Qalandia could suffer the same fate as Jenin, a camp they described as now completely emptied of people,” he said, describing the moments after he heard recent remarks made by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, calling for mass destruction to be carried out on Palestinian towns, camps, and villages in the West Bank,
Ben-Gvir’s remarks came after a settler attack near the town of Tell, southwest of Nablus, where four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed. His statements coincided with Katz’s orders to the army to expand military operations across the West Bank, tighten sieges on several cities and towns, accelerate home demolitions, and speed up the legalization of settlement outposts.
“Where are we supposed to go? There are no alternatives, and no one from the Palestinian Authority talks about alternatives,” Abu Halawa continued. “All residents believe their turn is coming,” he said, as he described near-daily Israeli incursions and home demolitions in the West Bank.
“My fear is no longer of the raids themselves, but of watching this camp become a repeat of the camps in the north, where homes are demolished, and people leave without knowing when they will return”.
The Ramallah camps watch and wait
What is unfolding in Qalandia, which is home to a population of roughly 15,000 Palestinians, is precisely what residents of the West Bank’s central and southern camps have feared for more than a year: that what happened in the Jenin and Tulkarem-area refugee camps in the north would no longer be an exception, but a template.
When Israel launched its sweeping “Iron Wall” operation to empty out three refugee camps in the northern West Bank in late January 2025, the campaign moved beyond conventional Israeli raids into mass demolition, forced displacement, and the prolonged closure of camps that has since kept thousands of residents from returning home.
Just one day before the raid on Qalandia, residents in the nearby Jalazone refugee camp , home to an estimated 10,000-13,000 people, feared it may be their turn next, after Israeli military vehicles and a heavier-than-usual troop presence gathered at the camp’s entrances.
Ahmad Abu Dweik, 31, stands at the edge of the camp, wondering aloud: “What happened in Qalandia, is it going to happen in Jalazone too?”
Ahmad, who lives in a multigenerational home in the camp, runs a popular gym that serves young people in the area. Despite having dreams of growing the business, today, he no longer thinks about how to grow it – he thinks only about how to save it from destruction.
“How much time are they going to give us? Whoever started this campaign in the north and brought it here to Qalandia — it’s clearly a plan for all the camps,” he said.
In the family home, Ahmad’s father, 65, a member of the local Fatah political organization, directs his frustration at the Palestinian political leadership.
“As an organization, we tried to meet with any political official in the [Palestinian] Authority, and we couldn’t,” he said. “We don’t see any real intervention to stop the demolition and expulsion operations. At the very least, tell us honestly: your turn is coming.”
In Ramallah’s third refugee camp, al-Amari refugee, home to 10,000, – 12,000 people, Motassem Nassar, 36, head of the Fatah organization in the camp and director of the Amari youth scouts, describes a reality in the camp shaped by permanent anxiety, and similar frustration with Palestinian leadership.
“In these times, people needed little explanation — they assumed, given the proximity, that their turn would follow,” he said, referring to the camp’s proximity to Qalandia refugee camp.
Most days, Nassar finds himself trying to address fast-spreading rumors in the camp about Israel’s next military target. But despite his membership in Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, he can’t provide answers to people’s most basic questions: do people stay in their homes and wait? Or should they start getting ready to leave now and look for shelter elsewhere?
People are living under the frustrating weight of two impossible scenarios: “One that means a probable loss, and one that means a fear with no end,” Nassar said.
Aseel Mafarjeh
Aseel Mafarjeh is a West Bank-focused journalist, focusing on stories that speak of the challenges and creativity of youth in Palestine.
