Following a crackdown on laborers and workers from the region who had previously been granted licenses to accept jobs in Israel and the occupied West Bank, Israel ordered thousands of Palestinians back to beleaguered Gaza on Friday.
After the terrorists from the ruling Hamas group in the Gaza Strip attacked southwestern Israel on October 7, many workers returned through the Kerem Shalom border, which is located east of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Since then, Israeli jets and tanks have been bombing the area.
“We used to work for them, serve them, in markets, restaurants, and houses for the lowest wages, and even with that, we have been humiliated,” stated Jamal Ismail, a laborer from the central Gazan Maghazi refugee camp.
In the past, Israel has awarded over 18,000 licenses to Gazans, enabling them to enter Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank to work in industries like construction or agricultural, where incomes might reach ten times the minimum wage in the blockaded Gaza Strip.
But the system has been abandoned because Israel launched a combined air and ground offensive to destroy the Islamist Hamas movement, which governs Gaza, in place of its prior strategy of providing financial incentives for stability.
Israel is cutting off all communication with Gaza. A statement from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated, “There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza.” “Those workers from Gaza who were in Israel on the day of the outbreak of the war will be returned to Gaza.”
Since then, Israel has carried out continuous bombings of the coastal Palestinian enclave and a military offensive that has killed over 9,200 Palestinians, over half of whom being youngsters, according to Gaza health authorities. Of Gaza’s estimated 2.3 million residents, almost 1.4 million have been displaced, according to U.N. officials.
The number of Gazans living in Israel on October 7, the day Hamas terrorists broke through the border fence and massacred 1,400 people while capturing 240 others into captivity in Gaza.