Thousands of exiled West Bank residents face uncertain months ahead

“The army forced us out. Me, my wife and family. We took nothing with us.”

Alaa Ofi is trying to figure out how to manage his drastically changed circumstances.

“We left behind our documents, clothes and everything we had at home.”

It’s been a month since the Israeli army raided the Tulkarm refugee camp, causing thousands of residents to flee.

At the local Palestinian governor’s office we found displaced camp residents looking for assistance.

Some were struggling to find affordable places to rent. Others, like Mr Olfi, needed to retrieve important belongings but had been prevented from returning to their homes by the Israeli army.

“My wife is expecting a baby next week,” Mr Olfi said. “I can’t take her to hospital because I need insurance papers and my ID, but they were left behind at home.”

What Israel is calling “Operation Iron Wall” against Palestinian armed groups has triggered an exodus of around 40,000 people from four camps in the north of the occupied West Bank: Tulkarm, Nur Shams, Jenin and Far’a.

Aid agencies are calling it the largest forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank since it was captured by Israeli forces during the 1967 Six Day War.

It’s also the first time any of the camps, which were established in the early 1950s for Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes during Israel’s War of Independence, have been almost completely evacuated.

Since the operation began in January, Israeli forces have ploughed up roads and demolished homes.

On the eastern edge of Tulkarm camp, a broad scar is visible where once there were tightly packed houses. Israeli soldiers can be seen patrolling what now looks like a street.

Elsewhere, roads into the camp have been churned up, armoured bulldozers creating piles of earth and pools of muddy rainwater. Pavements and shop fronts have been left mangled.

A concrete UN sign that used to stand over the camp’s now impassable main entrance has been knocked down.

At least 51 Palestinians, including seven children, have been killed by Israeli forces in the northern West Bank since the beginning of the operation, according to the UN.

Three soldiers have also been killed by Palestinian gunmen, one of them during an exchange of fire in Jenin and two others in an attack on a checkpoint in Tubas, it says.

The Israeli army says it’s tackling Palestinian militant groups, based inside the camps – groups it blames for a string of roadside bomb attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.

On Sunday, Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, said the army was “at war with Islamic terrorism in Judea and Samaria” – the term Israel uses to describe the West Bank.

He said he had instructed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “to prepare for a prolonged stay in the camps that have been cleared for the coming year”.

At the same time, Katz ordered tanks to take up positions in Jenin camp and the surrounding city, for the first time in more than 20 years.

Beyond underlining the government’s tough message, it’s not clear what role the four tanks will perform.

“The IDF is operating within very complex urban environments,” a military official said, on condition of anonymity.

“We’ve done that in Gaza, we’ve done that in the villages of southern Lebanon,” the official said, referring to Israel’s wars with Hamas and Hezbollah.

“We’re doing that in those neighbourhoods in Judea and Samaria because of the threat that we’re facing.”

Military officials say there have been no orders to evacuate civilians.

“The IDF has allowed local residents who wish to distance themselves from combat areas to leave safely through designated crossings,” the army said in a statement.

But residents of the camps say they were forced to leave, some of them under fire.

Others say instructions to leave were delivered by drone.

One video from Jenin shows a drone flying over the camp, seemingly broadcasting a message.

“Get out of your homes, the army will be here,” the message says.

The recently-appointed Palestinian governor of Tulkarm, Dr Abdullah Kmeil, calls Operation Iron Wall “a declaration of war”.

“You are talking about an operation of destruction,” he told the BBC. “Financial and mental destruction of the residents. These are things the Israelis have planned precisely.”

The aim, he says, is to create “a hostile environment” for the camps’ residents, in the hope that they leave and are absorbed into the general Palestinian population.

In the meantime, Palestinians find themselves struggling with a host of new difficulties, large and small.

In the village of Qabatiya, just south of Jenin, we found a driver frantically trying to reverse out of a muddy pothole left by Israeli bulldozers that had dug up the street.

His car was stuck in the middle of the road, holding up traffic in both directions.

In the centre of a nearby roundabout, a miniature replica of Jerusalem’s iconic Dome of the Rock had been smashed to pieces.

Despite Israel Katz’s warning, no-one knows how long the operation, and the restrictions on civilians, will last.

“If we can’t go back to our house for a year, it’s going to be a disaster,” says Alaa Ofi.

“We’ll be left stranded in the streets with the kids.”