At app.
10:30am on Wednesday 18 November 2009, a force from the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) moved approximately 300 meters into the north of the Gaza Strip.
The unit moved firing intensively.
It took positions in industrial premises that had been destroyed by IOF prior to the Israeli redeployment around from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
The force rounded a group of Palestinian workers who were removing rubble from the area and arrested 8 of them; including a child, and took them to Israel.
In the evening hours of the same day all the detainees were released.
The unit withdrew with two donkey carts, which the workers used to remove the rubble of destroyed buildings.
IOF moved the two carts to the Palestinian side an hour later.
Al Mezan's investigations indicated that the workers remove the rubble of the destroyed buildings and sell it to brick factories, which recycle it into bricks.
This is the only source of bricks for construction that is available in the Gaza Strip, which suffers from acute shortage in construction materials due the Israeli siege.
  According to an affidavit given to Al Mezan Centre by Morad Ali Daifallah, 21, who live in Al-Ghazalat neighborhood near Erez Crossing, he and his brother Ahmed, 16, were at near the Crossing riding a horse cart and collecting rubble for selling.
As they were carrying rubble, they suddenly heard gunfire.
Morad and his brother saw Palestinian workers running and leaving the area.
Morad called his brother and they drove the cart to leave the area.
But they saw Israeli soldiers pointing guns at them.
A soldier fired at one of the cart wheels.
Then, the two brothers heard the voice of an Israeli soldier ordering them to freeze, get down of the cart and take off their clothes.
They did so.
Israeli soldiers moved towards them and searched them.
Soldiers beat them with the backs of rifles as they searched them.
Then, they were allowed to put their clothes back on.
IOF cuffed and blindfolded the two brothers, with six other workers, and ordered them to sit on the ground.
Soldiers interrogated them.
IOF released the six workers in the afternoon while Morad and his bother were held until 10pm on the same day.
They were released at Erez Crossing.
Morad was immediately admitted at a Palestinian hospital, where, according to medical sources, he was treated from moderate bruises in the left shoulder.
  Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights condemns the IOF incursion into the Gaza Strip and the arrest of Palestinian workers near Erez Crossing.
Al Mezan strongly condemns the arbitrary arrest of the workers, but also the inhuman, degrading treatment they were subjected to by IOF.
This kind of treatment is absolutely prohibited under international law.
  Al Mezan views the IOF incursion and arrest of workers in the context of IOF's continuous attempts to enforce a security 'buffer zone' inside the Gaza Strip.
So far, dozens of Palestinian civilians have been killed, wounded and arrested by IOF near the borders with Israel in the pursuit of enforcing this zone.
Thousands have also been displaced as IOF attacks and home demolitions put their life at risk.
  Ends