The Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, has described the presence of the Israeli armed forces in several areas of the West Bank that were emptied of Palestinian population during the military offensive of 2025 as "permanent." Among these areas are the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams, where troops continue to be deployed on the ground, and he emphasized that, in his opinion, the Israeli Supreme Court should not intervene in this matter.
Katz's words come after a ruling issued this Monday by the Supreme Court, in which the court considers that the necessary conditions for the return to their homes of the tens of thousands of Palestinians forcibly displaced by the military operation are currently not met. However, the ruling urges the Army to develop a timetable that marks the deadlines for that eventual return.
"The long-term presence of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) in the camps is not a judicial issue, but an operational security matter that saves the lives of soldiers and Israeli civilians in the face of serious threats and in the face of the work of external jihadist elements supported by Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood to launch terrorist activities similar to those of October 7 also in Judea and Samaria," he stated, using the term employed by Zionism to refer to the West Bank.
In this line, he argues that "the Supreme Court does not have to intervene in this type of security decisions, just as it is not its competence to intervene in operational activity in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, or Iran."
Katz added that, according to his data, the continuity of this military deployment has caused the level of terrorism in the West Bank "to have been reduced by 80%, to its historically minimum percentages."