GAZA (Dispatches) – Thousands of Palestinians from Gaza, previously working in the Israeli-occupied territories and the occupied West Bank and then detained by the Zionist regime, are being pushed into the war-torn enclave, according to media reports.
Footage showed some of the workers returning on Friday through the Karem Abu Salem crossing in the occupied territories, east of the Rafah border crossing between the besieged Gaza Strip and Egypt.
It came after the office of Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday night that the “workers from Gaza who were in Israel on the day of the outbreak of the war will be returned to Gaza”.
Workers crossing into the Palestinian enclave said they were detained and ill-treated by the occupying regime authorities in the wake of the October 7 surprise operation by Hamas. Some still had plastic stickers carrying numbers around their legs.
“We used to serve them, work for them, in houses, in restaurants, and in markets in return for the lowest prices and despite that, we were humiliated,” said Jamal Ismail, a worker from the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Those from areas in northern Gaza would have to stay in the south after Zionist troops completed cutting off roads linking the two parts of the enclave late on Thursday, according to Palestinian officials.
About 18,500 residents of Gaza held permits to work outside the besieged strip before the war broke out.
The exact number of workers present in the occupied territories as the onslaught began remains unknown, but thousands are thought to have been rounded up by the Israeli army and transferred to undisclosed locations.
Jessica Montell, executive director of the Israel-based human rights organisation HaMoked, told Al Jazeera in October that more than 400 families and friends of missing laborers from Gaza had been in touch with the organization since the beginning of the war.