The second largest camp in the West Bank, it was established in 1950 within the boundaries of the Tulkarm municipality on the western edge of the West Bank, and hosted refugees from villages and cities such as Haifa, Jaffa and Caesarea.
the site
The camp is located in the western West Bank, within the borders of Tulkarm Municipality, which surrounds it from 3 sides, and is bordered to the east by the village of Dhnaba.
Origin
Palestinian refugees arrived in the area in 1949, numbering between 3,000 and 5,000. Tulkarm camp was officially established in 1950 on an area of 0.18 square kilometres, which the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) had leased from the Jordanian government.
Population
The number of refugees in the camp reached 21,000, according to UNRWA statistics in 2015, distributed among 1,760 families.
The number of refugees in the camp decreased after its establishment to 2,528 people in 1967, and their number increased in 1989 to about 10,500 refugees.
The origins of the displaced families in the camp go back to villages that were displaced from the former Haifa District area, and their roots extend to 32 villages that lived off agriculture, including: Al-Kafrein, Quneir, Sabarin, Umm Al-Zinat, Ijzim, Ain Ghazal, Arara, Al-Ghabiyeh, Umm Al-Shouf, Al-Lajjun, Al-Shaqirat, and Umm Al-Fahm.
The camp hosts more than 80 families, the most famous of which are the Hamidan, Alian, Sulait, Fahmawi, Al-Ghoul, Al-Shami, Shahada, and others.
From 1967 to 2016, about 38 young men from the camp were martyred, and during that time the number of detainees in the Israeli occupation prisons reached about 40, some of whom were sentenced to life imprisonment and more than 15 years, and some of whom are still detained.
the date
UNRWA began building concrete units in the camp in 1956, and the number of housing units in it reached 881.
The camp came under the control of the Palestinian National Authority in November 1998, following the signing of the Wye River Agreement, and the beginning of the first phase of redeployment.
Since its establishment, Tulkarm camp has embraced Palestinian fighters and resistance fighters, like other camps throughout Palestine, which have a long legacy of struggle, even before the days of the first Intifada in 1987.
The camp provided hundreds of martyrs, prisoners and wounded, and was an incubator for resistance fighters and fugitives who were motivated by the ongoing Israeli attacks on Islamic holy sites and Palestinian lands.
The spark of resistance began to ignite in Tulkarm after the martyrdom of Hamza Khrioush and Samer Al-Shafei in May 2023, following an attack launched by the occupation on the city’s camps.
At that time, the occupation prevented ambulance crews from transporting the injured who bled to death, so the Tulkarm Battalion fighters engaged in violent clashes with the Israeli army and caused it heavy losses. Since then, the camp has become one of the hotbeds of resistance.
The occupation’s attacks on the camps coincided with security operations carried out by the Palestinian Authority’s security services, which included arrests in the Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps, and the removal of barriers and barricades that the resistance fighters had placed at the entrances to the camps to prevent the occupation army from entering.
In January 2024, the occupation stormed the city from all directions with dozens of military vehicles, including no less than 8 crawler and regular bulldozers, and surrounded the camp and climbed over the houses in it, turning them into military barracks or turning them into observation and sniping points for everything that moved.
In June, the occupation launched another military operation that lasted 16 hours, during which the occupation forces turned the camp into a “heap of destruction and a place for mutilating corpses.” The camp witnessed a lot of bombing and deliberate destruction, and during the operation, 5 Palestinians were martyred, including two women and 3 resistance leaders.
In September 2024, the Israeli occupation army launched an air and ground military operation in the Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps, besieging them from all directions, destroying the infrastructure, engaging in violent clashes with members of the Islamic Resistance, killing a number of Palestinians, and bulldozing and completely or partially demolishing many homes.
Flags
- Abdul Rahman Zidane
He was born in the town of Deir al-Ghusun in Tulkarm Governorate in 1960, and is considered a symbol of national and Islamic work there. He grew up in Kuwait, where he immigrated with the 1967 setback. He then obtained a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in America, but was unable to discuss his master’s thesis at An-Najah University in Palestine following the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
He adopted Islamic thought since 1977, and was assigned by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) to form its military wing inside the occupied territories, and was arrested as a result in 1993.
He was elected to the Legislative Council in the 2006 elections, and assumed the position of Minister of Transport and Communications in the tenth Palestinian government. At that time, the occupation re-arrested him, and he was subjected to harassment by the Palestinian security services. He was subsequently arrested several times, and prevented from traveling until 2007.
- Fathi Qaraawi
He was born in the village of Ramin in Tulkarm Governorate in 1958. His origins go back to a family that was displaced from the Haifa district. He grew up in Tulkarm, and obtained a bachelor’s degree in jurisprudence and legislation from Jordan in 1982. He then worked as a lecturer, imam, and teacher in Tulkarm.
He adopted Islamic thought at the beginning of his youth, and joined the Islamic movement in the early seventies of the twentieth century. He was arrested several times starting in 1990, and remained in the occupation prisons for about 9 years. Then the Palestinian security services arrested him, before he was deported to Marj al-Zuhur for 6 months, then he returned to Tulkarm, and was prevented from traveling in 1987.
He won a seat in the Legislative Council in the 2006 legislative elections, and is considered one of the leaders of the Hamas movement in Tulkarm.