Thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza who were stranded in Israel when war broke out last month have been deported back to the war-torn strip after being expelled by the Israeli government.
A Guardian reporter in Rafah, on the southern edge of the strip, saw a steady stream of men of all ages with no phones, money or identity cards enter the territory on Friday morning via the Kerem Shalom crossing for commercial goods, having walked about 2km from the Israeli side of the border. Mada Masr, an independent Egyptian news outlet, said about 3,200 people had been sent back through the checkpoint, which is controlled by Israel and Egypt.
The UN Human Rights Office said it was “deeply concerned” about the expulsions. “They are being sent back, we don’t know exactly to where, [and whether they] even have a home to go to,” its spokesperson Elizabeth Throssell told a news conference in Geneva. She said it was an incredibly dangerous situation.
The Israeli government has been contacted for comment on the transfer.
The fifth round of war between Israel and Hamas since the Palestinian militant group seized control of the strip in 2007 began on 7 October after a bloody rampage by Hamas in Israel killed 1,400 people. More than 9,000 Palestinians have subsequently been killed in the Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion on the tiny ribbon of land, home to 2.3 million people with nowhere to flee the violence.
On Thursday, Israel’s security cabinet said in a statement that the country was “severing all contact with Gaza”. “There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza,” it said.
Before this month, 18,500 married men over the age of 25 had permission from the Israeli authorities to enter the country, mostly to work in agriculture and construction, as part of an Israeli policy designed to alleviate Gaza’s crushing poverty and create an economic lifeline that it was believed Hamas would be loth to jeopardise.
An unknown number of these workers were swept up in raids across Israel in the days after 7 October and imprisoned under the principle of administrative detention, which allows the arrest of suspects without charge or access to the evidence against them on the grounds that they may break the law in future.
Many have alleged they were tortured or otherwise mistreated in military prison facilities over the last few weeks. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was repeatedly denied access to the arrested workers, who were held as “enemy non-combatants”.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) did not immediately reply to the Guardian’s request for comment on the arrests or ill-treatment allegations.
Several thousand people are believed to have made their way to the occupied West Bank over the last few weeks, seeking their countrymen and a relative berth of safety. The Guardian met several labourers from Gaza marooned in Ramallah, the West Bank’s administrative capital, earlier this week.
They had two great fears: they live in dread of a text message or phone call from Gaza saying their family have been killed or are missing under the rubble, and they worry Israeli police and soldiers will raid their shelter in Ramallah and lock them up as suspected terrorists.
“When we hear the Israelis might be coming, we run for the hills and scatter like ants,” said one migrant worker. “Even the old guys run.” He was one of approximately 700 men from Gaza who had turned the gym and recreational centre in Ramallah into a de facto refugee camp.
A month ago they had belonged to the relatively privileged cohort of Palestinians from Gaza with permits to leave the impoverished territory and work in Israel, where salaries are six times higher, according to research released last year by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.
Up until 7 October, more and more workers were crossing into Israel each day – 18,500 of a promised 20,000 permits, taking home £2m a day, according to Palestinian and Israeli statistics. During the programme, more Palestinians left the strip each day than in the previous 16 years of siege put together.
That money was making a big difference in Gaza, where unemployment had hovered at about 45% for the last few years. Families were able to clear debts from businesses and projects that failed due to the restrictions placed on the strip’s economy; rebuilding after the 2021 war took place more swiftly than after previous episodes of conflict and new cafes and shops were opening.
But after Hamas attacked southern Israel, Israeli security forces started rounding up the workers from Gaza. It is not clear how many are still detained, or how many are still in hiding in Israel or the West Bank, left to feel like fugitives.
“When I saw the news, I knew it was too dangerous to go to work. The police were arresting all Gazans,” said Ahmad, 31, who had a job as a cook in a Tel Aviv shawarma restaurant. He and six fellow labourers from Gaza hunkered in their shared basement apartment, wondering what to do. After two days, Ahmad left to buy food. On his return he discovered the apartment empty and turned upside down – police had raided and arrested his flatmates.
Ahmad linked up with other workers from Gaza in Tel Aviv who rented a bus and fled to the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority provided mattresses and food to the men at the Ramallah recreation centre, one of several shelters around the territory, but it can do little to shield them from Israeli raids.
The labourers pass their days charging their phones, reading the news and trying to connect with friends and relatives back home. When they receive grim news, some wail and faint – ambulances have been summoned – and others lapse into silence. “My wife and sons are OK but I have nightmares,” said Ahmad.
Abu Mahmoud, 56, who used to clean a supermarket in the coastal city of Herzliya, braces himself every time he phones his wife, who is in Gaza City with their children. “There is bombing day and night. They can’t eat or sleep.”
His six-year-old daughter pleads with him to come home. “She says ‘Baba, come, we need you’,” he said.
Mahmoud said he would go if he could, notwithstanding the carnage, but Israel has blockaded the enclave. “All I can do is tell my wife to be strong.”
Sayef Olehe, 30, who fled his job as a butcher, said he veered from anxiety about his family to concern he would be arrested. “No one knows anything about the ones who have been jailed.”
In a recent phone call, his three-year-old daughter asked a question he could not answer. “She said: ‘Why are you working in Israel? They are killing us.’”
He would not work in Israel again, Olehe said.
Additional reporting by Sufian Taha
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