Israel upping number of permits for Gazans to work in Israel

Israel is expanding the number of permits for Gazans to work in Israel, in a bid to ease the economic situation in the coastal enclave and ensure quiet on the Israel-Gaza border.

Channel 12 reports that the government has raised the number of daily work permits from around 5,500, where it has hovered for years, to some 7,000 over the past week. If the current ceasefire continues, Israeli officials say, the number will rise to 10,000.

Some 15,000 Gazans once worked in Israel, but the permits were reduced after the Hamas terror group, which now runs Gaza, joined the Palestinian government under Mahmoud Abbas in March 2006. A decade and a half, at least three wars and numerous rounds of violence later, Gaza is in a desperate economic situation.

Israel and Hamas have reportedly reached an informal understanding that Israel will ease its restrictions on Gaza in exchange for a Hamas guarantee of an end to violence along the border.