In the West Bank city of Tulkarem, the landscape has been transformed after Israeli army bulldozers ploughed through its two refugee camps in what the military called a hunt for Palestinian militants.

The army gave thousands of displaced residents just a few hours to retrieve belongings from their homes before demolishing buildings and clearing wide avenues through the rubble.

Now residents fear the clearances will erase not just buildings, but their own status as refugees from lands inhabited by generations of their ancestors in what is now Israel.

The "right of return" to those lands, claimed by Palestinian refugees ever since the creation of Israel in 1948, remains one of the thorniest issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The army said it would demolish 104 more buildings in the Tulkarem camp this week in the latest stage of an operation that it launched in January during a truce in the Gaza war, billing it as an intensive crackdown on several camps that are strongholds of Palestinian armed groups fighting against Israel.

"We came back to the camp and found our house demolished. No one informed us, no one told us anything," said Abd al-Rahman Ajaj, 62, who had been hoping to collect his belongings on Wednesday.

Born in Tulkarem camp after his parents........

© International Business Times