Stranded in Limbo: The Palestinian Workers Trapped Between Exile and War 

For more than two years, hundreds of Palestinian workers from Gaza have been stranded in a makeshift refugee camp at the Nablus municipal stadium in the West Bank, their lives suspended in a state of profound limbo after being in Israel on October 7, 2023, when the Hamas attack occurred.

Unable to return to their families in Gaza due to the closed border and with their work permits cancelled, these men, once breadwinners in construction and agriculture, now live in converted locker rooms, surviving on sporadic aid and tormented by the news from home, where they have lost numerous relatives to airstrikes and their families endure a severe humanitarian crisis in makeshift tents.

Their existence is defined by psychological purgatory—haunted by the destruction they watch on screen and their powerlessness to help, with their hopes for the future fractured between a desperate desire to return and hold their surviving loved ones and a resigned conviction that they can never go back to Gaza’s ruins.

Stranded in Limbo: The Palestinian Workers Trapped Between Exile and War 

The Stadium That Became a Sanctuary 

In the dim locker rooms of the Nablus municipal stadium, the relentless news from Gaza streams from a television that rarely goes dark. For more than two years, this has been the backdrop for a group of men from Khan Younis, their lives suspended between exile and a war they can only watch on a screen. They are mostly construction workers who were in Israel on the morning of October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its attack. In the immediate aftermath, as Israeli forces began rounding up Palestinians from Gaza, these men fled to the West Bank. They remain there today, cut off from their wives and children living in makeshift tents inside the Gaza Strip, their temporary refuge having hardened into a protracted exile . 

They are among the more than 4,400 stranded Palestinian workers and patients from Gaza currently scattered across the West Bank, according to figures from the Qatar Red Crescent and UNRWA . Their plight is a forgotten dimension of the ongoing conflict, a human consequence of closed borders and a collapsed economy. They are trapped in a state of psychological purgatory, haunted by the destruction of their homeland and the suffering of their families, yet powerless to reunite with them. 

The Path to a Makeshift Refugee Camp 

Before the war, an estimated 18,500 married men from Gaza over the age of 25 held permits from the Israeli authorities to work in Israel, primarily in the construction and agriculture sectors . For many, like Baker Majjar, 37, life was split between a month working on construction sites in Israel and a month at home in Gaza. This delicate balance was shattered on October 7th. 

In the hours and days following the Hamas attack, Israeli forces swept up thousands of these workers in raids across Israel. Many were imprisoned, their work permits cancelled, while others were deported back to Gaza . However, hundreds, like Majjar, managed to make their way to the West Bank, hoping to find refuge. He crossed the border at Barta’a, a town straddling the Green Line, long used by Palestinians to evade official checkpoints . His journey, and that of many others, ended at the Nablus municipal stadium. 

In the first months of the war, the stadium was a temporary shelter for nearly 1,000 Palestinians from Gaza . Today, only about 50 remain, their lives condensed to the crumbling locker rooms. They sleep on mattresses or battered sofas, with a few electric fans offering scant relief from suffocating summer heat that can top 40°C (104°F). Laundry hangs from the fences around the pitch, a mundane symbol of a life on indefinite hold . 

Life in Suspended Animation 

The existence of these stranded men is characterized by profound uncertainty and a deep, gnawing anxiety for their families. 

• Precarious Livelihoods: The Palestinian Authority’s labour ministry provides them with about 700 shekels (approximately £162) every one to three months. This paltry sum is sent to their families in Gaza, though only about half makes it through, the rest lost to commissions. A handful have found short-term work, but the pay is meager and unreliable . 

• Psychological Torment: The true suffering is psychological. The men are consumed by worry for their families, who are living through the very catastrophe the men watch on television. “My wife is calling me, asking when she and my son are going to die,” said one man who had been working as a nurse in Israel on October 7. “Nothing breaks your heart more than hearing your wife cry and saying that she’s waiting for her death” . 

• Personal Tragedies: The camp has been the site of its own unique tragedies. One man, upon learning his son had been killed in an Israeli strike, suffered a fatal heart attack from the shock . Wajdi Yaeesh, director of the Human Supporters Association in Nablus, recounts a man who had written the names of his eight children on the wall beside his bed. “Before he left the stadium to move elsewhere, he had already crossed out four of those names – the ones who had been killed in Gaza” . 

The stranded are not only workers. The search results also reveal that at least seven women from Gaza, who were in the West Bank for cancer treatment—either for themselves or their children—have also been cut off from their families. In a heartbreaking footnote, the search results note that by March 2024, at least five children from Gaza being treated for cancer in a Jerusalem hospital had all died. Their mothers, now alone, have relocated to towns in the West Bank . 

The Crushing Economic Backdrop 

The personal despair of the stranded workers is set against a backdrop of near-total economic collapse in the Palestinian territories. The war has paralysed economic life, with the labour market in a state of severe contraction . 

The table below illustrates the catastrophic economic impact, showing the dramatic rise in unemployment: 

This economic disaster has been particularly brutal for workers who relied on jobs in Israel. In the West Bank, the number of workers employed in Israel and settlements plummeted from around 123,000 in 2023 to just 36,000 in 2024, a loss of over 85,000 jobs . This collapse of a primary income source has had ripple effects across the entire Palestinian economy. The construction sector, which employed many of the stranded workers, has paid the highest price, recording a 57% decline in the West Bank and a catastrophic 98% decline in Gaza . 

A Deepening Humanitarian Catastrophe in Gaza 

The families the stranded men are desperate to reach are facing conditions that transcend poverty, entering the realm of famine. The search results describe a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza: 

• Infrastructure Destruction: More than 85% of the infrastructure in the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, including over 102,000 buildings completely demolished . 

• Water Crisis: Over 85% of water and sanitation facilities are out of service, leading to a sharp decline in water supply. Approximately 49% of households in Gaza receive less than 6 liters of water per person per day for drinking and cooking, far below the WHO minimum standard of 15 liters . 

• Food Insecurity: Approximately 96% of the population in Gaza (2.1 million people) face high levels of acute food insecurity. The search results state that the population has “moved beyond the concept of poverty and are now talking about different levels of famine” . 

This is the harrowing reality for the wives and children of the men in the Nablus stadium. Baker Majjar’s family exemplifies this crisis; his wife and two young sons live in a tent in the al-Mawasi camp, their home destroyed, while he remains stranded, unable to help them . 

Diverging Hopes for the Future 

After two years of war and exile, the men in the stadium are fractured in their hopes for the future. For some, the only goal is reunification, no matter the conditions. “Now, with the truce, I only hope to hold my three surviving children and my wife again,” says Khaled, 51, from Gaza City, who has become the cook for the group. “I just want to go back to Gaza as soon as possible” . 

For others, the trauma has severed their connection to their homeland. Samir Hajjaj Abu Salah, 55, from Khan Younis, is convinced there is no future in Gaza’s ruins. “I never want to set foot in my home again,” he says. “Once my family is evacuated, we’ll settle somewhere far from the Strip” . 

This sentiment echoes the despair felt by others in the camp. As one man stated in earlier reporting, “There is no future any more. I just want to go back to Gaza and die with my family” . Yet, another, the man who worked as a nurse, offered a counterpoint of resilience: “I don’t want to wait for death. I want my son to grow up and become something useful to society. He doesn’t deserve to die, he has done nothing” . 

The stranded workers in Nablus are more than just casualties of a closed border. They are a living testament to the fragmentation of Palestinian society, the collapse of an economy built on precarious labor, and the profound human cost of a conflict that has left tens of thousands suspended in a limbo of their own, watching their world burn from a distant television screen. Their indefinite wait in a deserted stadium is a powerful symbol of a conflict that has left no life untouched, trapping ordinary people between the crushing weight of exile and the relentless scourge of war.