Gaza strip – The past few weeks have been deeply traumatic for Zaki Salameh, a Gaza resident who was working as a mason in an Israeli town when war broke out on October 7.
In the period following Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israeli army outposts and surrounding villages that day – and the relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces since then – Salameh was arrested, tortured and interrogated.
The 55-year-old said he “deeply regrets” working in Israel. He refused to say where he worked for fear of reprisals from the Israeli army. He is one of 18,500 Gazans who held a permit to work outside the enclave.
Salameh said he and other Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip were arrested and identified on October 8 before being taken to Ofer prison on the outskirts of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. They were summoned for interrogation and tortured in what Salameh described as an electric chair for several days.
“The Israelis asked us strange questions,” he said. “They wanted to know where the Hamas tunnels are, where the rocket launchers are placed and how the fighters move in and around Gaza. »
Israeli authorities also questioned the workers about their neighbors, their residential areas and the people who live there, he continued, and threatened to imprison them for the rest of their lives.
“They wanted to know what we knew about the Al-Aqsa flooding operation,” he said, referring to the surprise Hamas attack that killed 1,400 Israelis.
“Some young men were tortured and insulted in a very brutal way,” Salameh said. “The questions were ridiculous. The Israelis know exactly who we are and if we had ties to Hamas we wouldn’t even have work permits.”
On Friday morning, the Israeli army announced that it had released 3,200 workers from Gaza to the coastal enclave via the southern crossing point of Karem Abu Salem – or Karem Shalom.
This followed a decision by the Israeli government the previous night that these workers would no longer be granted work permits.
“Israel cuts off all contact with Gaza,” the Israeli government press service said on Thursday.
“There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza. Gaza workers who were in Israel on the day the war broke out will be sent back to Gaza.
Expelled, arrested, arrested
Gaza residents with permits to work outside the enclave were often construction workers while others worked in restaurants and shopping malls. The money they earned was a source of respite from Israel’s 17-year blockade of the Gaza Strip that devastated the economy, leading to an unemployment rate of nearly 50 percent.
Workers granted permits were approved after a strict security review by Israeli intelligence and the Israeli military. This meant that after a thorough background check, each worker was confirmed as a civilian with no political affiliation in the Gaza Strip or ties to Palestinian armed groups and resistance factions.
But as Israel began bombing the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army began expelling Gaza workers from their workplaces in Israeli cities.
Thousands of workers, like Salameh, were arrested and taken to Ofer prison. Some were arrested and detained in other undisclosed locations, without any communication with their families. Others were abandoned at checkpoints in the occupied West Bank and traveled to Palestinian towns with only the clothes they were wearing.
Several Israeli human rights organizations, such as Gisha and HaMoked, said some of these workers had been illegally detained in military facilities, in violation of international law. The organizations sent petitions and individual inquiries to Israeli authorities demanding information on the fate of the workers as well as those of other Gaza residents who had received medical permits to enter Israel and had also been arrested.
Fadi Bakr, who worked in an Israeli shopping center, was fired on October 7. The 29-year-old obtained a work permit a year and a half ago and usually spent a week at a time in Israel. before returning to his family in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.
After his dismissal, Bakr traveled to the occupied West Bank and stayed in Hebron with other workers who he said were all distraught by the horrors unfolding in the Gaza Strip.
“I was very worried about my young children, my wife and my family,” he said. “The intensity of the bombing in Gaza is unlike anything we have ever seen. It was cruel and brutal, and I could barely be in contact with my family.
Israeli forces stormed the building in which Bakr and the workers were staying a few days later and took them to Ofer Prison.
The workers were detained for 20 days before being released.
“For the first time, I’m very scared because I don’t know if I’ll see my family again or not,” he said.
“The Israelis questioned us day and night about our relations with the Hamas movement, even though we had no connection with any political movement. We only came to work.
The workers also said they were mentally exhausted from thinking about their families under constant Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip.
Bakr said he was angered by the Palestinian Authority’s apparent lack of action to challenge their arrests or check on their well-being.
“How can cities, supposedly under the control of the Palestinian Authority, be attacked without question by Israeli forces? » he asked bitterly. “We had no protection and no Palestinian official came to our defense or even asked how we had been treated or the possibility of our release from prison. »
Fate of other workers unknown
The Israeli offensive has devastated the Gaza Strip and killed more than 9,000 people, including 3,826 children. More than 32,000 people were injured in attacks on densely populated areas, including refugee camps and residences. The United Nations estimates that 45 percent of Gaza’s homes have been damaged or destroyed.
In addition to the blockade preventing Gaza’s access to fuel, drinking water and electricity, most of its infrastructure and main roads have been severely damaged.
As workers entered the Gaza Strip on Friday, expressions of fatigue and exhaustion on their faces, they wondered about their families and how to reach them.
Salameh’s family lived in the northern town of Beit Lahiya but was forced to leave due to heavy bombing. They are now taking refuge in one of the schools managed by the UN in Khan Younis.
“There were no cars or other vehicles to take me from the far south to the central area,” he said.
The roads are unsafe, but he managed to hitch a ride on tuk-tuks and a horse-drawn cart that relatives of other workers had brought with them as they passed.
The fate of thousands of other Gazans who worked in Israel remains unknown.
Tasneem Aqel, who lives in Gaza City, last saw her father two weeks before October 7.
“I contacted him once during the first days of the war and he told me he was still working in Israel,” she said. “But then the news started to circulate about the expulsion of the workers and their deportation to areas in the West Bank. »
When Tasneem tried to call her father again, she got no response. She managed to call her father’s friend, a colleague who had left with him through the northern crossing of Beit Hanoun/Erez.
“All I found out was that my father had lost his phone while he was in Ramallah,” she said. “His friend said he hasn’t heard from him, so it’s very likely that my father is still being held in prison.”
