Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an urgent petition filed by the Adalah Legal Center on June 12 to halt the widespread demolition of the Jenin refugee camp, giving the Israeli military the green light to continue destroying approximately 90 civilian structures in the occupied West Bank.
Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said in a statement that the demolition orders went into effect on June 9, threatening approximately 300 housing units belonging to hundreds of Palestinian refugee families. They follow widespread demolitions recently carried out in Jenin and the Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps, amid an ongoing military offensive targeting the camps, creating the largest wave of Palestinian displacement in the West Bank since the occupation in 1967.
In its decision, the court accepted the Israeli military's general argument that the demolitions were necessary to ensure "freedom of movement" for Israeli forces within the camp. However, the court did not address the fact that these areas are currently uninhabited and no clashes are taking place there, nor did it review the Israeli military's classification of the entire camp as a "combat zone," according to Adalah's statement.
The petition was submitted by Dr. Suhad Bishara, attorney and director of the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. She argued that these operations constitute a grave violation of international humanitarian law and that these orders follow a similar military order issued on March 19, 2025, authorizing the demolition of approximately 95 structures in the Jenin refugee camp. In recent months, numerous additional demolitions have been carried out without prior warning, making it difficult to fully assess the extent of the damage. The Supreme Court had previously rejected a petition against these demolition orders.
In response to Adalah's previous letter on the matter, military authorities claimed that the presence of what they called "terrorist infrastructure" in the camp transforms the entire area into a battlefield, justifying the demolitions under the pretext of "military necessity," even though the area is currently free of combat.
In its petition, Adalah warned that this logic erases any distinction between civilians and combatants and transforms Palestinian refugee camps into zones of unrestricted military destruction, in flagrant violation of international law and potentially constituting war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
In response, Adalah stated, "This decision provides legal cover for the Israeli military's systematic destruction of refugee camps in the West Bank, in flagrant violation of international law. The court's refusal to intervene entrenches the policy of collective punishment and widespread forced displacement, and perpetuates a culture of impunity."
It is worth noting that the demolition plans are issued amid an ongoing Israeli military escalation across the West Bank, particularly targeting refugee camps, which has displaced more than 40,000 Palestinians from their homes. These orders are an extension of widespread demolitions previously approved by the Supreme Court, which rejected Adalah's petition on May 7, 2025, against the demolition of more than 100 homes and civilian structures in the Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps in the occupied West Bank, according to the rights center's statement.
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The Israeli Supreme Court approves a mass demolition in Jenin camp.