3200 Palestinian workmen returned on Friday to the war-torn Gaza Strip after being deported by the Israeli authorities.
One of the workers identified as Mansour Nabhan a resident of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza was reportedly tortured and killed by Israeli officers and sent on Friday with his friends into Rafah.
Their deportation came after the office of Israel premier Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday night that the workers from Gaza who were in Israel on the day of the outbreak of the war would be returned to Gaza.
The Israeli security cabinet also approved their return to Gaza and announced the severing of all contacts with Gaza.
“Israel is severing all contact with Gaza. There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza” a statement following a security cabinet meeting said.
Footage showed some of the workers returning on Friday through the Israeli-controlled Karem Abu Salem border crossing east of the Rafah border crossing between the besieged Gaza Strip and Egypt.
Workers crossing into the Palestinian enclave said they were detained maltreated and assaulted by the Israeli authorities and the Palestinian Authority security forces in the wake of the October 7 attack by al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas. Some still had plastic stickers with numbers around their legs.
The Israeli authorities also confiscated their cellphones money and their personal belongings.
“We used to work for them in houses restaurants and markets in return for the lowest wages and despite that we were humiliated” Jamal Ismail a worker from the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza told Al Jazeera satellite channel.
Those from areas in northern Gaza would have to stay in the south after Israeli forces reportedly cut off roads linking the two parts of the coastal enclave late on Thursday according to Palestinian officials.
About 18500 residents of Gaza held permits to work outside the besieged Strip before the war broke out.
The exact number of workers present in Israel when the Israeli war began remains unknown but thousands are thought to have been rounded up by the Israeli army and police and transferred to undisclosed locations.
