Jerusalem (CNN) – Israel’s security cabinet announced Thursday that Israel will return Gazans working in the country to the besieged Palestinian enclave, adding that it will also cut ties with Gaza.
Before the terrorist attacks launched by Hamas on October 7 and the kidnappings, around 18,000 Gazans were allowed to enter and work in Israel, where they could earn much more money than Gazans.
The Israeli government’s press office said in a statement Thursday: “Israel is severing all ties with Gaza. There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza, and those workers from Gaza who were in Israel the day the war broke out will be returned.” in Gaza.”
The statement does not clarify how and when workers will return to what has now become an active war zone, bombed hundreds of times a day.
The government also said it would deduct funds allocated to Gaza, including funding from the Palestinian Authority – which enjoys limited self-government in the West Bank – going to the Strip.
In recent years, Israel began issuing thousands of work permits to Gazans to enter Israel, as part of an economic incentive strategy that Israeli authorities hoped would encourage Gazans to distance themselves from Hamas.
Gazans in the West Bank told CNN last month that obtaining a work permit for Israel allowed them to become primary breadwinners. Many of them are the only members of their families with jobs, and the salaries they earn in Israel are many times higher than those they can earn in Gaza.
Following the terrorist attacks launched by Hamas on Israeli territory, which killed 1,400 people, most of them civilians, the Israeli army closed all roads leading to the Strip and many Gazans working in Israel were left stranded .
“I always wanted this permit because the situation in Gaza is really terrible. The financial situation, the debts, the economy is zero, there are no job opportunities,” Ismail Abdel Majeed told CNN last month, adding that he was unemployed until obtaining permission.
(tagToTranslate)Middle East