Jabalia Refugee Camp

Established as a refugee camp in 1948, Jabalia became the core of a dense urban neighborhood northeast of Gaza City.[1] The surrounding Jabaliya urban area extends over rolling hills and forms part of the route connecting Gaza City with Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.[1] The camp lies near a village bearing the same name and is the Gaza refugee camp closest to the Erez crossing with Israel.[3]

The established camp, the neighboring city, and the wider Jabalia urban area are not interchangeable geographic units: population reports variously count registered camp refugees, residents of the camp and city together, or people in an operational area during wartime.[2][10] A camp profile updated in January 2013 gave its area as 1.4 square kilometers, whereas a population estimate for October 2023 explicitly combined the camp with the neighboring city.[3][10]

Before the extensive destruction of 2023–2024, the built environment included narrow alleyways, markets, large houses, and apartment buildings reaching eight or nine stories.[11] In some streets, buildings stood only about ten centimeters apart, illustrating how tightly development had filled the available space.[11] A June 2024 account also described sewage in streets, including conditions said to have existed before Israeli forces entered.[12]

Jabalia’s modern history combines the experience of a multigenerational refugee community with the political and military history of northern Gaza.[4][3] Schools operating double shifts, food distribution, and health services were important features of camp life.[3] Employment in Israel also shaped camp life for decades.[5] Repeated fighting damaged homes and utility networks.[6][7]

Approximately 35,000 refugees settled in Jabalia after the 1948 War of Independence, most having fled villages in southern Palestine.[3] The camp’s establishment formed part of a much larger transformation of the Gaza Strip: the territory remained under Egyptian rule, and its population tripled after the arrival of tens of thousands of Palestinian wartime refugees.[13] Most of those refugees settled in camps maintained by UNRWA.[13]

An account of the 1967 census gives Jabalia a population of 44,000.[14] Research on the camp in the following year also recorded a substantial difference in educational attainment between refugee generations: a 1968 study found illiteracy among 71 percent of the first generation, compared with 7 percent of the second.[15] These figures describe the particular generations examined in that study, rather than present-day literacy levels.[15]

In 1971, the campaign directed by Southern Command head Ariel Sharon against Gaza terrorism included demolishing buildings and clearing roads in the Jabalia and Shati refugee camps.[16] Approximately 1,600 Palestinian families whose homes were destroyed were relocated, with resettlement options in Gaza and El-Arish; that total covered the campaign described, rather than Jabalia alone.[16] The campaign combined changes to the camps’ built environment with measures intended to reduce their populations and the presence of terrorist elements.[16]

A separate family history illustrates the distinction between the camp’s establishment and the earlier origins of individual residents’ families.[17] A study published by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs recounts a 1987 visit to the Abu Ahmad family, whom it identifies as camp inhabitants living in a spacious dwelling on Gaza City’s outskirts.[17] It records their oral account of ancestral migration from Egypt and settlement in Zarnuqa, an account concerning that family’s ancestry rather than the founding of Jabalia camp.[17]

Large demonstrations took place in Jabalia camp in mid-November 1987, before the road collision commonly associated with the outbreak of the First Intifada.[4] One demonstration involved more than 2,000 participants who attempted to break through the fence of a nearby military base.[4] The unrest developed amid harsh camp conditions, opposition to Israeli rule, and feelings of humiliation, deprivation, frustration, and discrimination; refugees, particularly in Gaza, were initially at the forefront of the uprising.[4]

A collision involving an Israeli truck and vehicles carrying Palestinian workers killed four Palestinians near Jabalia in December 1987.[18][19] The deaths and the ensuing funerals became an immediate catalyst for demonstrations and clashes, against the background of unrest already present in the camp.[4][18] One account describes more than 6,000 people attending the funeral of three of the dead, followed by a spontaneous protest directed at an army outpost in the camp.[19]

Israeli forces responded to the unrest with live ammunition, tear gas, beatings, and arrests, and 20-year-old Hatem al-Sisi was killed.[19] Clashes then spread rapidly beyond Jabalia to other Palestinian areas under Israeli control.[19] The camp’s prominence in these opening events made it an important location in the history of the uprising, rather than simply the site of an isolated road accident.[4][19]

On December 21, 2001, Palestinian Authority security forces and residents of Jabalia camp fought violent clashes following the funeral of 17-year-old Mahmoud Abdel Rahman El-Muqayed.[20] He had been killed the preceding night during a Palestinian Authority attempt to arrest members of a Hamas operational cell.[20] Security forces fired live ammunition during the subsequent confrontation, killing five Palestinian civilians and injuring about 50.[20]

Some demonstrators, including armed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members, attacked a nearby police station.[20] The clashes lasted several hours, and the crowd reached almost 10,000 at its height.[20] The Palestinian Authority deployed 400–500 reinforcements and armored personnel carriers.[20]

Damage from the 2008–2009 Gaza conflict generated plans to repair water, sewage, and waste networks, including pipes and tanks inside Jabalia and Rafah camps.[6] The proposed work formed part of a wider UNRWA recovery appeal addressing damaged refugee shelters and infrastructure.[6] In 2014, a severely damaged main sewage line in Jabalia again required repairs after homes had been flooded with sewage; a broader assessment of Gaza’s water infrastructure at that time found three of five wastewater treatment facilities still out of operation.[7]

In March 2019, demonstrations over rising living costs extended to Jabalia camp.[21] The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs reported that Hamas security forces dispersed protesters with gunfire and clubs, particularly in Jabalia and Deir al-Balah.[21] Its account linked the protests to demonstrations beginning on March 14 and cited a March 16 account of forcible dispersal across several Gaza camps and cities.[21]

During the August 5–7, 2022 escalation between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, separate incidents in Jabalia killed civilians, including children.[22][23] A projectile that struck a road on August 6 killed seven civilians; an assessment of the incident concluded that it was likely a misfired rocket launched by Palestinian armed groups.[23] A separate explosion at al-Falluja cemetery beside the camp killed five children and seriously injured an eight-year-old.[22][23] Across the escalation as a whole, the reported Palestinian death toll was 49, including 17 children.[22]

On October 31, 2023, an Israeli airstrike struck Jabalia during operations against Hamas.[24] The IDF said it killed Ibrahim Biari, commander of Hamas’s Central Jabaliya Battalion, together with other terrorists, and that underground tunnels collapsed, bringing down nearby buildings.[24] Residents described the ground collapsing and buildings falling into sinkholes; video from the scene appeared to show at least 47 bodies being recovered.[24]

The IDF identified Biari as a leader of the October 7 attack and said Hamas operatives had barricaded themselves in a high-rise near a school, medical center, and government offices.[25] Hamas spokesmen Hazem Qassem and Ali Baraka denied that Biari had been present in the camp.[25] Palestinian reports placed the death toll from the October 31 strike at at least 50, while other announcements used substantially larger figures or combined the dead and wounded.[24][26]

A Hamas-run government media office subsequently announced that at least 195 Palestinians had been killed in attacks on Jabalia over Tuesday and Wednesday, with 120 missing beneath rubble and at least 777 wounded.[27] Israel said it had targeted and killed Hamas leaders in the camp.[27] A further December strike reportedly leveled an apartment block and killed more than 100 people, while targeting a Hamas leader who was also reported killed.[28]

Individual accounts also described the difficulty of deciding whether to leave northern Gaza.[29] One anonymous respondent who said he was in Jabalia told an interviewer that people feared being killed on the journey south and alleged that Hamas prevented departures.[29] His account included criticism of Hamas and an appeal for support for peace, but represented an individual’s experience rather than a survey of camp residents.[29]

During a three-week Israeli operation described in June 2024, forces recovered seven hostage bodies and located and destroyed tunnels in Jabalia.[12] The operation took place in a densely built environment of closely spaced homes, multistory buildings, and constricted streets.[12] The camp was described as a Hamas stronghold in the account of that operation.[12]

The IDF’s entry into Jabalia in October 2024 was at least its third raid there since October 2023.[30] During that month, the military estimated that about 60,000 Palestinians had been in Jabalia before the latest operation and said more than 55,000 civilians had left.[31] It put the remaining population at several hundred and alleged that Hamas had tried to keep civilians in the area.[31]

A November visit found damaged or destroyed buildings, dirt tracks where roads had once been, and an area largely devoid of civilians.[32] Approximately 60,000 people were said to have evacuated from the camp over the preceding month.[32] Other residents interviewed during the operation expressed fear of Hamas or a belief that danger existed throughout Gaza; one said, “We prefer simply to die at home.”[33] These responses reflected the people interviewed, not a uniform position among Jabalia’s residents.[33]

By early December, the IDF estimated that it had killed or captured approximately 2,000 militants during the campaign.[30] A separate account described around 70,000 civilians being evacuated before Israeli forces confronted thousands of suspected militants.[30] These operational estimates concerned the campaign described and were not counts of the camp’s registered refugee population.[2][30]

Satellite-based reporting indicated that nearly half the refugee camp had been destroyed or cleared between October 14 and December 15, 2024.[8] A new military corridor connected western and eastern roads.[8] Figures for the wider area indicated that more than 100,000 people had fled over 11 weeks, leaving fewer than 50,000 residents; these totals covered a broader area than the established camp alone.[8]

Another mapping assessment identified approximately 19,000 buildings in Jabalia and concluded that all had been destroyed or severely damaged.[10] That assessment was made by Adi Ben Nun, technical director of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s GIS Center, using satellite imagery and mapping data.[10] Its geographic coverage was Jabalia as mapped in that account, rather than a clearly isolated inventory of structures inside the refugee camp.[10]

When displaced residents began returning to northern Gaza in January 2025, some Jabalia families found their homes uninhabitable.[9] Hisham El-Err, standing beside his ruined multistory home, described his family living in tents without sufficient water, food, or other essentials.[9] Residents searched rubble for useful belongings, and one returning family left Jabalia again after finding the destruction too extensive.[9]

In February 2025, Jabalia al-Nazla municipality, western Jabalia’s emergency committee, and government ministries established a tent settlement with support from partner organizations.[34] Covering a little more than 18 acres, it contained 1,000 tents arranged in eight sub-camps and sheltered approximately 1,000 families, or 5,000 people.[34] Municipal work included arranging drainage and improving water services, although the settlement’s location was not specified as being within the established refugee camp.[34]

Jabalia had nearly 110,000 registered refugees in the camp profile updated in January 2013, which identified it as the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight refugee camps.[3] A separate table marked 2021 listed 113,990 refugees for Jabalia, within a total of 592,160 across the eight camps.[35] The figure reported for 2023 was approximately 116,000 registered refugees.[2]

Registration figures do not necessarily indicate how many people were physically living within the camp at a particular moment.[2] A 2018 description placed more than 110,000 people in its 1.4-square-kilometer area, while a November 2023 account estimated roughly 200,000 people in Jabalia in ordinary times without defining a camp-only boundary.[5][36] A different estimate, explicitly covering the camp and neighboring city together, gave approximately 175,000 residents on October 6, 2023, citing the Palestinian population registry.[10]

Wartime estimates describe a different demographic situation from these earlier registration and residential figures.[2][31] The IDF’s October 2024 estimate of about 60,000 people before its latest operation, and the subsequent reported departures, concerned people in the area during that operation rather than all refugees registered to Jabalia.[31] Likewise, the late-2024 total of more than 100,000 people displaced referred to the wider area and cannot be treated as a camp-only count.[8]

The historical census material also uses different categories.[14][15] One account gives 44,000 residents for Jabalia in 1967 and roughly 175,000 residents across Gaza’s refugee camps.[14] Another account of a September 1967 home-to-home census gives 392,563 people for the Gaza Strip, including 204,855 classified as 1948 refugees, without separately enumerating Jabalia.[15] Its counting method excluded people who had left the territory.[15]

Proximity to the Erez crossing connected Jabalia’s economy to employment in Israel.[3] Before the Second Intifada, more than 21,000 Palestinians crossed Erez daily for work in Israel, although this was a crossing-wide total rather than a count of Jabalia workers.[3] From June 12, 2007, pedestrian passage was closed apart from very limited medical and business exceptions.[3]

For decades, many men from Jabalia worked in Israel; employment declined after the Second Intifada began in 2000 and, in one retrospective account, stopped entirely after Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza.[5] Many residents subsequently remained unemployed and relied on UNRWA food allocations.[5] The camp profile updated in January 2013 similarly described rising unemployment, a declining ability of families to support themselves, and substantial dependence on food and cash assistance.[3]

Education provision reflected the demands of the camp’s large population.[3] The January 2013 profile listed 20 school buildings operating double shifts to accommodate 40 schools.[3] It also listed one food distribution center and one health center.[3] These are historical service statistics for the period represented by that profile, not an inventory of facilities operating after the destruction of 2023–2024.[3][8]

The 1968 study’s contrast between first- and second-generation illiteracy—71 percent and 7 percent respectively—documents a pronounced generational difference in literacy within the population studied.[15] It provides an earlier educational measure alongside the later institutional picture of heavily used school buildings and double-shift teaching.[3][15]

Water quality and drainage were persistent infrastructure problems.[3][7] The profile updated in January 2013 reported that 90 percent of the water was unfit for human consumption.[3] A 2018 description characterized infrastructure as poor and roads as nearly impassable during rain, while the 2014 sewage-line damage had flooded homes with wastewater.[5][7] By early 2025, emergency shelter provision again required basic drainage and water-service work for displaced families.[34]

Accounts of the road collision associated with the First Intifada differ in date, vehicle descriptions, and whether the victims came from the camp or the neighboring village.[18][19] One account places the collision on December 8 and identifies a false rumor—that the Israeli driver was a murder victim’s brother seeking revenge—as an immediate spark for the December 9 riots.[4] These differences do not alter the documented sequence of preceding unrest, deaths in a collision, and subsequent demonstrations.[4][19]

Responsibility for the August 2022 cemetery deaths also received conflicting explanations.[22][23] One account describes an Israeli counterstrike against a Palestinian Islamic Jihad launch unit, while another records initial Israeli blame of Islamic Jihad alongside reports that a preliminary Israeli inquiry found no Palestinian rocket firing at that time.[22][23]

The October 31, 2023 strike generated competing claims about Biari’s presence and casualty totals that the reporting did not independently resolve.[24][25] Announcements of approximately 400 combined dead and wounded should not be confused with claims of 400 deaths.[26] The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs disputed a death figure above 400 and proposed 40–50 from photographs, but that was its interpretation, not an established casualty count.[37] A separate commentary reproduced UN Women’s November 2 condemnation of strikes on Jabalia and civilian infrastructure.[38]

The December 2023 figure above 100 deaths appeared in a Senate resolution as a newspaper-reported claim attributed to U.S. officials, not an independent congressional finding.[28] The 2024 evacuations likewise drew human-rights criticism, while Israel denied pursuing a policy of forcibly evacuating civilians.[8]