According to the military, as of Sunday, Israel will close the Erez, or Beit Hanoun, crossing to Palestinian workers in the Gaza Strip.
The closure will remain in place until further notice in the wake of rocket fire from the Palestinian territory, a military statement said.
In a statement, the coordinator of the Israeli government’s operations in the Palestinian territories, Ghassan Alyan, said, “Following the firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip, we inform you that on Sunday, the Erez crossing will remain closed to workers and merchants.”
On Friday, without causing any damage, the Israeli army said it had detected two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel.
The reopening of the crossing that connects Israel and Gaza will be studied depending on the “assessment of the situation,” Alyan said.
Based on what it said was a “security assessment,” the Israeli army imposed a closure on the occupied West Bank, and the crossings with the Gaza Strip on Thursday. The closure is scheduled to end on Saturday evening.
A total of 12,000 Palestinians hold work permits in Israel.
According to Israeli media, in March, the Israeli government said it would raise the number of work permits to Palestinians to 20,000.
Since the beginning of April, amid repeated Israeli arrest campaigns in the occupied West Bank and daily settler incursions into the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in East Jerusalem, tensions have been running high across the Palestinian territories.
