Israeli forces turn Palestinian homes into military bases
Submitted by Sari Jaradat on Tue, 03/24/2026 - 14:54
In two different communities in the occupied West Bank, residents tell MEE the Israeli army has taken over their homes for days
Children from the Jamal family in al-Rehiyya, south of Hebron, March 2026 (Sari Jaradat/MEE) Off Khalid Jamal, a middle-aged Palestinian father, is describing the moment Israeli soldiers took over his home in al-Rehiyya, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
“We were asleep. It was 2.42am. The door was forced open. I woke up to find the house surrounded,” he says.
There were 20 Israeli soldiers, he tells MEE, 10 of them at one door and 10 of them at another. “The house was surrounded in an abnormal way. And the force was the Israeli army,” he says. “They entered the house like a flock of sheep.”
The soldiers told Jamal to take the children and go outside. He told one of them: “There’s no way we can stay outside the house, we are 17 people.”
Jamal is standing in the small entrance to his building. An old door sits propped up against the wall. He turns and goes into the only room on the ground floor. It's here, he says, that the soldiers moved him and his other family members.
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There is a tiny pop-up tent with a picture of Spider-Man on the side of it, some cushions, a few pillows and a rug on the floor.
“My wife and the girls - my wife stayed here and my two daughters stayed here,” he says, pointing at the cushions on the floor.
“And the rest of the children, come, I’ll show you,” he says, lying down on the rug and bringing two of his young boys in around him to demonstrate how they slept huddled together.
“I took off my jacket and there was no blanket,” Jamal says. “That night was very cold.” He points to the door. There were three Israeli soldiers stationed there that night, he says, two men and a woman. The woman would be replaced by another woman every half hour, the men every two hours, according to the family.
Khalid Jamal on the roof of his building, which was taken over by Israeli forces (Sari Jaradat/MEE)
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The rest of the Israeli forces, Jamal says, were spread out through the house and onto the roof - his neighbours saw them there, while he and his family were downstairs.
“Upstairs, from the moment they entered until they left, there was something being hammered above. We could hear banging, but I don’t know what it was.”
He walks upstairs and points to four broken tiles and broken children’s beds. “All the children were afraid. Even the adults were afraid. This is a killing army,” Jamal says.
Israeli forces take over Palestinian homes
After Israel and the US launched their war on Iran on 28 February, Iran has responded, with missiles striking Israel and the occupied West Bank.
Last week, four Palestinian women in Beit Awa, near Hebron, died from shrapnel wounds after fragments from an Iranian missile tore through a hair salon.
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Israeli soldiers have responded - as they have done in the past when conducting operations in the West Bank - by taking over the homes of Palestinians and using them as bases, however temporarily.
“I mean, it’s not the first time the army has come to us,” Jamal says. Outside, he points to a pile of discarded rubbish lying on the ground. “These are the remains of their food,” he says, of the soldiers. “About seven or eight boxes.” There are cans of empty tinned food on the ground with Hebrew writing on them.
Food cans and other rubbish left behind by Israeli forces (Sari Jaradat/MEE)
Jamal and his family were trapped for a day and a night. He says the Israeli soldiers went into other homes - “almost every part of the town” - but didn’t always stay for long in them.
The Israeli soldiers didn’t steal anything. “The captain, he found a woman’s bracelet on the sink and handed it to me himself. He did not steal anything,” Jamal says.
But he says that “the humiliation was beyond words. They kept me in stress positions for about three hours… They took off my shoes and more than five soldiers dragged me outside”.
Jamal tells MEE the Israeli army had already begun withdrawing when clan elders brought the family meals. “They brought 40 meals, here to the house,” he says.
“I am not thinking of leaving, absolutely not,” Jamal says. “The house was completed by my sons. I built the ground floor. There is nothing I fear for, except my children.”
'We assumed we would not return'
Mohammed Jodeh is a young man from Fawwar, the southernmost refugee camp in the West Bank, about eight kilometres south of Hebron.
“The army came to us at three in the morning,” he tells MEE, describing how Israeli forces took over his family’s home. “They entered the house and searched the rooms. They told my father that they wanted to turn the house into a military barracks for three days.”
Jodeh says there was nothing the family could do. “We were shocked, because it was the first time we had been forcibly expelled from the house,” he says, adding that Israeli forces had come to the home many times, but never forced the family out.
“My father told them we would leave in the morning, but they refused,” Jodeh says. And so the family left their home in the middle of the night, with other residents of Fawwar taking them in.
Because their home is at the entrance to the refugee camp, the family thought that Israeli forces wanted to displace them from the neighbourhood completely.
“They asked us to take our clothes, bedding, food, and drink,” he says. “We assumed we would leave the house and not return. But when the officer told my father it was only a matter of three days, our fears were eased somewhat.”
Mohammed Jodeh pictured close to his home in the Fawwar refugee camp (Sari Jaradat/MEE)
In the past, Israeli forces have come into the family’s home and intimidated them. “But this time, their aim was to treat the house as a military barracks,” Jodeh says.
Asked why the soldiers did this, Jodeh tells MEE: “The first objective is to make us feel that we are living in an unsafe place. The second is to assert their presence, to say: we are here… And then there is punishment, whether individual or collective.”
“Because of the army raids by the occupation forces, people no longer have a sense of safety or stability,” the young Palestinian man says. “Our fear has increased.”
In the residents’ group chats, as soon as people hear of a raid, “a curfew effectively takes place in the camp”, Jodeh says, “because everyone fears for themselves and their children”.
Israeli forces frequently conduct raids at Fawwar, which is just a few kilometres from the Israeli settlement Beit Hagai, and the Israeli military has a watchtower at the entrance to the camp.
In December 2023, Israeli forces shot and killed a 17-year-old Palestinian boy in Fawwar, and there have been other killings at the camp.
“In terms of the impact, you are sitting in your house. And then suddenly you are forced out, it is something unimaginable,” Jodeh says. “In the end, we remain steadfast. There is nothing in our hands, no option available. But this is the reality. This is what exists.”
Occupation Oscar Rickett al-Rehiyya, occupied Palestine News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19
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