The Israeli army completed its withdrawal from the Tubas governorate in the northern occupied West Bank on Saturday evening, November 29, 2025, after a four-day military offensive that left dozens of Palestinians wounded, over 200 detained, and extensive infrastructure damage in its wake. The operation, which began on Wednesday, November 26, targeted the city of Tubas, surrounding villages such as Tammun, Aqqaba, and Tayasir, and the Al-Fara’a refugee camp, marking one of the largest-scale incursions in the region since the escalation that followed the October 2023 Gaza war.
Tubas Governor Ahmed Al-Asaad confirmed the full withdrawal in statements to multiple media outlets, noting that Israeli forces had vacated all homes they had turned into temporary military positions. He described the assault as unprecedented in its scope, with the entire governorate—home to more than 50,000 Palestinians—placed under total siege and strict curfew, cutting off medical care, food supplies, and access to agricultural lands.
The offensive involved hundreds of troops from several Israeli brigades, backed by armored bulldozers, drones, and Apache helicopters. Residents reported that the operation began shortly after midnight on Wednesday when earth mounds were erected on every major road, completely isolating Tubas from the rest of the West Bank. By morning, soldiers were conducting house-to-house raids, forcing families onto the streets and occupying rooftops and high-ground homes for surveillance and sniper positions.
Damage to civilian infrastructure has been severe. Bulldozers destroyed roads at the entrances to Tubas city and Al-Fara’a camp, tore up large sections of the main water network in Tammun, and plowed through agricultural fields. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported that its ambulances were repeatedly blocked from reaching the injured, including dialysis patients and one person who died after being denied urgent medical transfer. Medical teams eventually treated more than 200 injuries, 78 of which required hospitalization; the vast majority resulted from severe beatings during arrests or field interrogations.
At least 200 Palestinians were detained during the four-day operation. Most were subjected to on-site questioning inside requisitioned homes and later released after mistreatment, but around 70 remain in Israeli custody. Local authorities said soldiers raided nearly 350 homes, systematically vandalizing furniture, appliances, and personal belongings in what residents described as deliberate punitive destruction.
The withdrawal was gradual: forces left Tammun and Al-Fara’a camp on Friday evening before completing their exit from central Tubas on Saturday. Despite the pullout, the Israeli military stated that it will continue intensive operations across the northern West Bank and confirmed plans to demolish dozens of homes in Jenin refugee camp in the coming days for what it called “operational requirements.”
The Tubas raid is part of a dramatic escalation in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023. According to United Nations data updated through late November 2025, at least 995 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank (including 213 children), more than 10,600 have been injured, and over 20,500 have been arrested. The year 2025 alone has seen at least 251 Palestinians killed in the territory, making it the deadliest year on record since the UN began systematic tracking in 2005.
Human rights organizations have condemned the repeated large-scale raids as collective punishment and possible war crimes, pointing to the routine use of live fire against civilians, obstruction of medical aid, and widespread home demolitions and vandalism. In Jenin, a separate ongoing operation has already begun destroying 24 homes in the refugee camp’s Abdullah Azzam neighborhood, displacing families for the second or third time since January 2025.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice issued a landmark advisory opinion declaring Israel’s decades-long occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza illegal under international law. The court ruled that Israel must end its presence as rapidly as possible, evacuate all settlers, dismantle the settlement enterprise, and pay reparations for damages caused. The UN General Assembly subsequently demanded compliance within 12 months, though no enforcement mechanism has been activated.
Palestinian officials described the Tubas operation as an attempt to impose new territorial realities on the ground in defiance of the ICJ ruling. Residents returning to their homes on Sunday began clearing rubble and repairing water lines, but many expressed fear that the army will return soon. With harvest season disrupted by movement restrictions and settler attacks, and with medicine stocks running critically low across West Bank hospitals, humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate.
As one Tammun resident told reporters while surveying the damage to his bulldozed streets: “They destroy everything, leave for a few days, then come back again. We rebuild with our hands, but how many times can we keep doing this?”
The cycle of raid, destruction, and temporary withdrawal shows no sign of ending, leaving the northern West Bank in a state of permanent emergency two years into the broader regional war.
