Thousands of workers are stuck in the West Bank after Israel forces workers from Gaza
Gaza back, thousands more remain stuck in the West Bank: Zrain’s daughter and daughter relishes every minute of a stranger’s text message
“My son, when I speak with him, I say, ‘How are you?’ and he tells me, ‘Baba, I write my name on my arm, in case I am killed,'” Zrain says. His son wants people to know who he is when he dies.
His wife and five children are staying in Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital, where the United Nations estimates some 50,000 people are seeking refuge from Israeli strikes. He relishes every text message and every call, even if the news is chilling.
In the courtyard, another worker from Gaza tellsNPR that being away from his children still makes him sad even though he is safe here.
He looks at pictures of his daughters while on his phone. He says seeing smiling faces helps him forget about the bad things that have happened.
Alfarany has nearly two dozen nieces and nephews and says he gets overwhelmed thinking about all the children going through the trauma of war right now.
Ibrahim Alfarany, a Palestinian worker from the Gaza Strip who fled into the West Bank in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike
“I had a video, but it disturbed me too much that I deleted it,” he says. I watched it several times and then said I was going to get rid of it.
His wives and kids survived an Israeli airstrike at a playground several weeks ago. The house he lived in was destroyed in the area that is no longer used as a residential neighborhood.
Alfarany says he is very happy and relieved to know his brother is alive, though the life he and other family members are experiencing in Gaza is hard to watch from afar.
Alfarany was able to go to the West Bank after the Israeli military took his brother into custody near Nahariya. Alfarany talked to his brother on Friday, as his brother was walking into Gaza with thousands of other workers.
Ibrahim Alfarany, a Palestinian worker, has been staying at the Al-Istiqlal University for more than three weeks. He usually works and lives near a store just south of Tel Aviv, where he stocks vegetables for a few weeks at a time, and travels back to Gaza.
Those who are now stuck in the shelters and camps in the West Bank are among many thousands of workers from the Gaza Strip who avoided detention in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack. They were able to make their way to the West Bank, which is under Israeli occupation. For now, their accommodations are provided by the Palestinian Authority, which has some local control in the West Bank.
At the Al-Istiqlal University campus in the Palestinian city of Jericho, laundry hangs from the windows. There are dorm rooms stacked with bunk beds, and in larger halls, men lounge on mattresses pushed up against the walls, scrolling on their cellphones for news from Gaza. There are plastic bags on the floor. There are communal sinks and an impromptu barber shop where you can get a shave and a trim if you join the wait list.
Israel imposed a blockade of the Gaza Strip after it revoked the temporary work permits. Thousands of Palestinians from Gaza went missing or were arrested by Israeli police in the following days, according to HaMoked.
Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7 have killed more than 9,000 people, 70% of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials. Nearly 200,000 homes have been destroyed.
To return to Gaza, they would have to go through Israel — but they are not allowed to enter. Even if they could, there was no way to know how they would get to Gaza.
On Friday they heard about thousands of other laborers who were forced to return to Gaza on foot from Israel, with numbered tags on their ankle.
There are conversations in the hallway, over the communal sinks, between bunk beds and on the phone with relatives when there is news from Gaza. For thousands of workers from Gaza who are stuck in makeshift shelters and camps in the West Bank, much of their world — including their families — is still 60 miles away.
TEL AVIV, Israel — Hundreds of thousands of people still stuck in northern Gaza will have just three hours to flee south today, Israel’s military announced Saturday.
The Israeli troops remained in the Strip for about a week after entering Gaza through a ground offensive. This military effort has mostly been focused in the north and has effectively cut the strip in half, preventing aid from getting in or civilians from getting out.
Officials in Gaza also closed the one available border crossing from Gaza into Egypt on Saturday. They said foreign passport holders will not be allowed to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt unless patients from the hospitals in Gaza City and northern Gaza are permitted to get to the crossing.
For Palestinians with foreign nationalities, or with connections to foreign countries, the crossing has been open the past three days. The list of people approved to leave Gaza today — in what would have been the fourth day for the border to be open — included more Americans.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip will be given three hours to leave the territory after it was declared an “enemy entity” by Israel on Saturday. The announcement came a day after Israeli jets struck targets in the Gaza Strip for the third time in a week. Over 9,200 people have been killed since hostilities began on October 7.