When Israel began bombing the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s deadly attack on October 7, thousands of Palestinians from Gaza were in Israel on work permits. Israel started granting such permits in 2021, though the process is far from easy: workers are frequently denied the authorization, and traveling to work requires long commutes with hours-long waits at border crossings and invasive security checks.

But Palestinians take the work because they need it; before the latest siege, unemployment in Gaza stood at 47 percent. And when the occupation forces closed entry into Gaza and revoked the permits last month, thousands of those workers were stranded. For weeks, they were missing. “There’s 5,000 that we don’t have any information about,” Muhammad Aruri, head of legal affairs for the General Union of Palestinian Workers, told Tribune late last month. “We don’t know if they are dead or alive.”

Many of them were detained without due process or legal representation. On November 2, some ten thousand of these workers were released and deported back to a largely-leveled Gaza, left to discover if their family members and homes had been decimated or spared by Israeli airstrikes. The workers allege they were tortured while in detention, with their money and cell phones taken and never returned.