Israel’s war on homes: From Hebron to Gaza and southern Lebanon

“Around 12:30 at night, the Israeli army vehicles were at al-Jalda Square,” one Hebron resident told Al Jazeera. “They told us to leave our homes. We asked until when, and they said until further notice. We left with the clothes on our backs.”

Hours earlier on October 23, two Israeli soldiers had been killed by armed Palestinian men at a checkpoint near the city. Hebron, the occupied West Bank’s largest city, has been under Israeli siege ever since, with restrictions extending across a governorate of about 800,000 Palestinians.

A black X now marks the homes from which families have been forcibly expelled. Soldiers have moved into others, turning them into military outposts.

In just over a week, nearly 5,000 Palestinians have been displaced, according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, which called the measures collective punishment in violation of international law.

The current operation builds on years of demolitions. From 2009 up until the siege began on October 23, Israeli forces demolished 2,491 buildings and displaced 3,534 Palestinians in the Hebron governorate, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Across Area C and occupied East Jerusalem, the monthly average of demolitions since 2024 has been at least double that of the preceding 15 years.

Many demolitions are linked to Israel’s restrictive permit system. Palestinians struggle to obtain Israeli-issued building permits, leaving structures built without them vulnerable to demolition.

In Masafer Yatta, a cluster of 13 communities in the South Hebron Hills, Israeli authorities have demolished about 400 structures in 15 years, displacing 969 Palestinians. Nearly half were demolished since January 2025.

UNRWA’s West Bank director, Roland Friedrich, said the scenes in Hebron carry “alarming echoes” of the mass displacement in the northern occupied West Bank in early 2025, when Israeli military operations emptied the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps.

More than 34,000 Palestinian refugees from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps remain displaced, according to UNRWA, more than a year after Israel’s “Iron Wall” operation began in January 2025. The operation destroyed more than half of the camps’ residential buildings.

OCHA’s demolition records capture only a fraction of that destruction. Between 2009 and October 2026, the agency recorded 1,399 buildings demolished in the Jenin and Tulkarem governorates, displacing 4,139 people. Those records mainly track demolitions carried out for lack of permits or as punishment, not buildings destroyed during military raids.

An investigation by the research group Forensic Architecture found evidence of deliberate, systematic destruction. Researchers verified more than 200 incidents involving the destruction of buildings and streets across four refugee camps, using armoured bulldozers, controlled demolitions and air attacks. They found that roads were widened through homes and gardens to create routes for military vehicles. The group concluded that Israel was applying tactics in the occupied West Bank similar to those it had used in Gaza.

In February 2025, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Tulkarem and Jenin would come to resemble Jabalia and Shujayea, two of Gaza’s most devastated areas.

The raids have not stopped. Last week, Israeli forces detained four Palestinians in Tulkarem, and in the village of Burin, south of Nablus, troops converted several homes into military barracks, as they have in Hebron.

Near Jenin, the army has ordered the residents of an entire village to leave permanently. “I have sheep and cows. Our entire lives are tied to this land,” said farmer Jabri Yahya. “Last year they uprooted our olive trees, and this year they want to force us to leave. We don’t know where to go.”

In Gaza, the destruction is on a far larger scale. By June 16, 2026, an estimated 201,290 structures had been damaged or destroyed, about 82 percent of all structures in the Strip, according to the UN Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).

Many families now shelter in tents, makeshift structures or damaged buildings, often without reliable water or sanitation.

Another winter brings new risks. Mohammed al-Jamal, 60, has been displaced several times since he fled his home in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood. He now shares a worn-out tent on the beach with about 30 members of his extended family, patching it before every storm because they cannot afford a new tarpaulin. “We are living in the street, not in houses that protect us,” he said.

Across the Strip, the neighbourhoods families fled have been reduced to rubble. Google Maps satellite imagery updated in September shows the scale of the destruction across the besieged Gaza Strip, more than three years into Israel’s genocidal war.

Drag the sliders below to compare neighbourhoods before and after.

In southern Lebanon, a July 2026 assessment by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), based on satellite imagery from June 16, identified 31,259 buildings damaged or destroyed, mainly south of the Litani River.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded displacement of 333,144 people across Lebanon as of September 9.

Despite the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, Israeli forces continue to occupy parts of the south, and demolitions have left many residents unsure whether they can return.

Across Hebron, Jenin, Gaza and southern Lebanon, the destruction does more than displace people. It leaves them nothing to return to.

In Hebron, UN human rights chief Volker Turk warned that “threats to empty and erase entire neighbourhoods” raise "serious concerns of ethnic cleansing", and called for all those displaced to be allowed home. For many families, the question is no longer when they will go home, but whether there will be a home to go back to.