Two Palestinians were arrested by Israel Defense Forces troops after crossing the Gaza border fence into Israel Friday morning.

The men crossed near Kibbutz Alumim in the Sdot Negev Regional Council area.

IDF forces rushed to the site to intercept the men, believing them to be potential terrorists targeting the nearby kibbutz.

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But an initial interrogation led the IDF to believe they had attempted the dangerous crossing in search of work in Israel.

Gaza’s economy has been devastated in recent years by the ongoing conflict between the Hamas regime in the strip and neighbors Israel and Egypt.

An ongoing Israeli blockade and a summer war between Israel and Hamas caused billions of dollars in destruction and economic slowdown in the coastal territory, while Hamas’s alliance with ousted Egyptian Islamist president Mohammed Morsi led the Cairo government of Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to seal the border between Gaza and the most populous Arab state to its east over the past year.