When the heinous attack by Hamas and other armed militants in the south of Israel began on October 7, thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza with Israeli work permits were present in Israel. Prior to the attack, there were roughly 18,500 Palestinian residents of Gaza who held permits enabling them to access manual labor jobs in Israel, mainly in agriculture and construction. It is not clear how many of these permit-holders were in Israel that Saturday.... Unable to return to their homes in Gaza given the hostilities surrounding Gaza’s crossings with Israel, and Israel’s subsequent decision to close the crossings hermetically, numerous workers from Gaza made their way to the West Bank, hoping to find shelter with local residents. A number of Gaza workers who crossed into the West Bank through Israeli-controlled checkpoints reported they were held at the checkpoints for many hours, their cell phones and cash were taken away, and they were subjected to violent and humiliating “questioning” and harassment by soldiers.On October 11, Gaza workers discovered that the Israeli work permits lawfully in their possession had been revoked, and that there was no record of their permits on COGAT’s Al-Munasiq app, where Palestinians can check on the status of their permit applications to Israeli authorities. COGAT later confirmed to Gisha that it had revoked all work permits issued to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and that the permits “will not be reinstated.”The mass revocation of people’s permits instantaneously turned Gaza residents who had been lawfully present in Israel into “illegal aliens,” from Israel’s perspective. Soon after the permits were deleted from COGAT’s app, the organizations learned that the Israeli authorities were arresting Palestinians from Gaza. Some were arrested inside Israel, some at checkpoints en route into the West Bank, and others still in areas of the West Bank that are under the Palestinian Authority’s civilian and security control.
Reading between the lines, one sees that Israel didn't detain all the workers. And other reports show that Israel actually sent hundreds to the West Bank after interrogation. They revoked their permits, and detained some.
Gisha doesn't even hazard a guess as to why Israel might be acting this way. So allow me.
Hamas had excellent intel about every community surrounding Gaza, and it is highly likely that some of these workers provided Hamas with that information. Moreover, there are reports that some victims recognized the workers participating in the mass violence. Of course Israel would want to question each and every Gazan worker - not only to see if they were involved in the massacre, but also to see if they were purposely sent by Hamas to be positioned as sleeper cells in Israel itself.
While some articles are framing this as a human rights issue - socialist site Jewish Currents seems to be upset that the permits were revoked, seeming to think that Israel should still allow Gazans to freely enter and exit Israel during a war -they are ignoring the basic human rights of Israelis not to be murdered. Moreover, how could anyone even consider that Israeli survivors of the attack live with people who very possibly either worked with Hamas or cheered the massacre of their friends and family?
Non citizens of Israel have no rights to be in Israel - that should be obvious. Either Israel ships them to Gaza, which makes no sense when the crossings are closed, or they send them to the West Bank, which they are doing, or they detain them if there appears to be a chance that they are dangers to national security.
Any nation would do the same.
And the fact that Israel released hundreds of them show that Israel is not engaging in "collective punishment" against them. Israel is looking at each case individually and making decisions for each person.
None of this is outrageous. None of this is illogical. All of this makes sense in the context that they are effectively citizens of an enemy state.
As always, the people who pretend to care about the human rights of Gazans are completely dismissive that Israelis have any human rights of their own.
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