Tulkarm, in the north of the West Bank, was one of the Palestinian cities to come under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction in 1995. A city of 34,000 situated close to the Green Line Israeli border, like neighboring Qalqilya, it has not only been badly affected by the military closure of the past three years but also by the building of the West Bank apartheid wall. Tulkarm refugee camp houses over 16,300 refugees, and Nur al-Shams, 3 km (1.9 mi.) to the east of the city is home to 8,200.

An interesting fact about the governorate of Tulkarm is that it has the highest production of honey in the West Bank! It was also home to several local industries: textiles, stone quarries, chemical factories, and other small industries. The local economy has been extensively damaged as a result of the closure on towns and borders, as it is impossible to fulfill the necessary import and export needs to support such businesses. As with other Palestinian cities, a large proportion of the income of the population came from working as semi-skilled and skilled laborers in Israel, and this income and financial support has been decimated by military closure.

The people of Tulkarm face the problems of military curfew like other West Bank cities. Infrastructure has been damaged by tank invasion—paving, street lighting, road surfaces, and so on.