Thousands of fisoner exiled residents face uncertain months ahead

“The army forced us to go out. I, my wife and my family. We don’t get anything.”

Alaa Ofi is trying to discover how to handle its drastically changed circumstances.

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

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

In the local office of the Palestinian governor we find the displaced residents of the camp that seek help.

Some struggled to find affordable places to rent. Others, such as Mr. Olfi, needed to recover important belongings, but the Israeli army had prevented him from returning to his homes.

“My wife expects a baby next week,” said Olfi. “I can’t take her to the hospital because I need insurance papers and my identification, but they stayed behind at home.”

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

Help agencies call it the largest forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank since He was captured by the Israeli forces during the six -day war of 1967.

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

Since the operation began in January, Israeli forces have poured roads and demolished houses.

On the east edge of the Tulkarm camp, you can see a wide scar where there were pressed houses once. You can see Israeli soldiers patrolling what now looks like a street.

In other places, the roads in the camp have exhausted themselves, armored excavators create lots of earth and slimer rainwater swimming pools. The pavements and fronts of the stores have been broken.

A concrete UN sign that used to stand on the main entrance of the camp has been demolished.

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

Three soldiers have also been killed by Palestinian armed men, one of them during a fire exchange in Jenin and two others in an attack against a control point in tubas, he says.

The Israeli army says that it is addressing Palestinian militant groups, based in the camps, groups to which it blames for a series of bomb attacks on the road against Israeli soldiers and civilians.

On Sunday, Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the army was “at war with Islamic terrorism in Judea and Samaria,” the term Israel uses to describe Bank.

He said he had ordered the Israel Defense Forces (FDI) “to prepare for a prolonged stay in the camps that have been authorized for next year.”

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

Beyond underlining the difficult message of the government, it is not clear what role the four tanks will play.

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

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

“We are doing that in those neighborhoods in Judea and Samaria due to the threat we face.”

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

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

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

Others say the instructions to leave were delivered by Drone.

A Jenin video shows a drone flying on the camp, apparently transmitting a message.

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

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

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

The objective, he says, is to create “a hostile atmosphere” for the residents of the camps, hoping that they leave and be absorbed by the general Palestinian population.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians are fighting with a lot of new difficulties, large and small.

In the town of Qabatiya, just south of Jenin, we find a driver frantically trying to reverse a muddy bump left by the Israeli excavators who had unearthed the street.

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

In the center of a nearby roundabout, a miniature replica of the iconic dome of the Jerusalem rock had been beaten in pieces.

Despite the warning of Israel Katz, nobody knows how long the operation and restrictions to civilians will last.

“If we cannot return home for a year, it will be a disaster,” says Alaa Ofi.

“We will be stranded in the streets with the children.”