Nov. 3 (UPI) — Israel on Friday began sending thousands of Gaza workers who had been working in Israel when the Oct. 7 Hamas attack occurred back to the war-ravaged enclave.
The workers started returning to Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel.
“Israel is severing all contact with Gaza. There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza,” Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “Those workers from Gaza who were in Israel on the day of the outbreak of the war will be returned to Gaza.”
Israel also said its security cabinet decided to “deduct all funds designated for the Gaza Strip — in addition to the deduction, required by law, of funds paid to terrorists and their families — from Palestinian Authority funds.”
Israel collects taxes on the Palestinian Authority’s behalf and transfers them monthly under the Oslo peace accords.
“What happened to us never happened to any human being before.They suspended our permissions. We tried to go to the West Bank. They detained us and put us in places we never knew where we were,” One of the returned workers told CNN.
Roughly 18,000 Gaza Palestinians had permission to work in Gaza before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
A group of about 130 Gaza Palestinian workers complained of ill-treatment after that attack, according to USA Today, alleging they had been arrested, beaten and then transferred from Israel to Ramallah in the West Bank.
One of those workers said they had great difficulty trying to contact their families as Gaza was being bombed.
“I am powerless to help them, and for every 10 times I try to reach them on the phone, I get through maybe once,” said the worker, speaking in Ramallah.
Hundreds of civilians, including about 400 Americans, left Gaza through the Rafah crossing into Egypt Thursday. A total of 600 foreign passport holders, including dual national Palestinians from 14 countries, were allowed to leave.
