The Ghanem family, driven from a refugee camp by the Israeli military, now live under a flimsy metal roof that offers little protection, while the sight and sound of Iranian rockets streaking overhead have become almost daily.
They are among roughly 32,000 Palestinians displaced last year when Israel forced residents from three long-standing refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
Their vulnerability has grown since Feb. 28, when U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran sent debris from intercepted missiles raining into the West Bank.
"The children were terrified by the sound of the rockets," said Madleen Ghanem, who has children ages 3, 8, 11 and 14 living with her in a one-room shack, while her older children live elsewhere.
More than 270 pieces of missile debris have fallen on the West Bank since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense rescue service.
Unlike in Israel, where bomb shelters are widely available, the West Bank has virtually none, leaving the Ghanem family with nowhere to hide.
While Iran has not been reported to deliberately target Palestinian territories, four Palestinian women were killed last month when an Iranian missile struck the West Bank town of Hebron.
"We don't have shelters. The space where we stay is the same space we hide in. There are no shelters and no place to run to," Madleen said.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In early 2025, during a brief truce in fighting with Hamas in Gaza, Israel’s military began demolishing homes and destroying roadways in Tulkarm camp, the nearby Nur Shams camp and the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
Israel said its operations in the camps were necessary to demolish civilian infrastructure that could be exploited by Hamas.
Human Rights Watch called the expulsions war crimes and crimes against humanity in a report on the displacements published last year.
Some leaders from Israel’s ruling coalition have repeatedly called for Israel to annex the West Bank, an area roughly 60 miles long that Palestinians see as the core of a future independent state, along with Gaza.
Israel cites historical and biblical ties to the West Bank, which it captured during the 1967 war.
The Ghanems had lived in a three-story house in crowded Tulkarm camp, where the women of the family spent decades growing trees, flowers and vines that hugged their verandas.
Areej Ghanem, Madleen’s sister-in-law, said Israeli soldiers broke into their home without warning in the middle of the night last year.
"We didn’t take clothes, nothing at all. They made us leave. Our father can’t get up or down. He’s an old man; he can’t walk. We left, dragging him," Areej said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on the Ghanems’ case.
After their house was destroyed, Areej, her sister and her niece moved with their father, Mahmoud Ghanem, 89, to a small rented room in the nearby town of Tulkarm.
Areej is the only family member earning money, working as a maid. The room has no kitchen, so she washes dishes in the bathroom. With little money, the family has not been able to afford meat for more than a year.
"Honestly, I have no hope for the future. We can’t even provide basic food," Areej said.
Meanwhile, Madleen, her husband Ibrahim, who is Areej’s brother, and their children, who had also lived in the family house, moved to a different part of Tulkarm, where they had bought a small plot in 2023 just before the Gaza war broke out.
Ibrahim had worked as a construction worker, one of thousands of Palestinians permitted to cross into Israel for labor.
But after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, incursion into southern Israel, which triggered the Gaza war, Israel revoked work permits for most Palestinians, leaving Ibrahim unemployed ever since.
He said he and his wife sometimes cannot afford gas and instead cook over an outdoor fire.
Though they now live about an hour’s walk apart, the family tries to gather each week to create a semblance of normalcy.
At a dusty roadside playground on a recent Friday, Areej and Madleen spread a picnic blanket over a faded patch of synthetic turf as their children played.
Madleen said she dreams of finishing the house they started building and hopes one day the family can reunite under one roof. Areej said the important thing is staying together.
"Either we die together or we live joyfully together," she said.
