Israel has sealed off large parts of the Tubas governorate after sending heavy reinforcements into the northern Jordan Valley, shutting the region off from the rest of the occupied West Bank and imposing a sweeping siege.

Residents told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that military bulldozers piled earth across every approach road before dawn, while Israeli Apache helicopters fired rounds over empty fields around Tubas in a bid to threaten Palestinian residents.

Troops then began house-to-house searches in the city of Tubas as well as the four nearby towns, including Tammun and Aqqaba, as the army announced a new military operation it claimed was targeting resistance fighters.

Tubas Governor Ahmed Asaad dismissed that justification, telling Al Jazeera that the Israeli assault has nothing to do with security and everything to do with geography.

“The assault is targeting Tubas for its location near the Jordan Valley, in a new effort to impose new realities,” he said.

Asaad said about 30 families had been forced from their homes, and troops had seized several buildings on high ground overlooking the governorate.

More than 50,000 Palestinians live across the five towns now encircled by the army.

Collective punishment

Asaad condemned what he described as a new round of collective punishment on a community already facing daily incursions and constant harassment at surrounding checkpoints.

With the military curfew in place, he said local authorities had suspended schools and public institutions and activated emergency committees across the governorate.

Movement of ambulances and medical teams has also been restricted. Asaad said Israeli forces blocked access to several patients who needed urgent care.

Local officials have contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross to intervene and secure medical transfers.

Ethnic cleansing

At least two Palestinians were transferred to hospital on Wednesday after soldiers beat them during raids in Tubas and Tammun, according to Palestine Red Crescent Society medics.

Residents told the Palestinian news agency Wafa that the scale of the operation, which began shortly after midnight, resembles the large invasions Israel has conducted across the West Bank since the Gaza genocide started in 2023, where troops have demolished homes, bulldozed roads, detained thousands and sought to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homes.

Hamas condemned the “criminal Zionist occupation army”, saying the latest siege, curfew and raids reveal “the extent of the systematic crimes perpetrated by the extremist occupation government”.

The group said the assault is part of a policy aimed at “crushing any Palestinian presence in order to achieve complete control over the West Bank” and an attempt to “ethnically cleanse” the occupied territory.

“This operation is part of the ongoing annexation and displacement plans, through which the occupation seeks to transform West Bank cities and villages into besieged and fragmented areas,” Hamas said, adding that Israel’s “colonial project … will not break the will of our people”.

The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, another resistance faction, issued a separate statement denouncing the raid as part of an Israeli “open war” to annex the West Bank and forcibly remove its residents. It accused the United States of enabling Israel’s “systematic aggression”.

This year alone, Israeli forces have carried out nearly 7,500 raids across the West Bank, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“The occupied West Bank is experiencing its worst displacement crisis in decades,” OCHA said, citing demolitions, military operations and escalating Israeli settler violence.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in the past two years.

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch said Israel’s mass displacement from three refugee camps amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, estimates nearly 32,000 Palestinian refugees have been forced from those camps and surrounding neighbourhoods.