Newsletter
Palestinian Workers in Time of War
With no work, and no Israeli or Palestinian social safety net, 200,000 Palestinian workers in the West Bank paid a heavy price for the October 7 war.
23/02/2025
With no work, and no Israeli or Palestinian social safety net, 200,000 Palestinian workers in the West Bank paid a heavy price for the October 7 war.
Executive Director of MAAN, Assaf Adiv, met on Thursday, December 12, with Mr. Roderick van Schreven, a senior official at the Dutch Foreign Ministry, and his team at the Dutch Embassy in Israel.
The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, which came into effect on Wednesday, November 27, marks the end of the war in Lebanon. If it holds, a period of reconstruction will begin, bringing a dramatic increase in the need for workers in the construction sector. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Palestinians are waiting for the government to allow them back into construction sites in Israel. Thousands of contractors are also desperate for skilled labor, reporting that the foreign workers they have managed to recruit are too few and insufficiently trained.
Have you ever felt that your supervisor treated you like a piece of trash? Intisar (not her real name) experienced this situation over and over again. She is a Palestinian who worked in a factory located in the outskirts of Jerusalem since August 1, 2023.
On October 6, 2024, the verdict of the Jerusalem Regional Labor Court (presided by Judge Rachel Berg Hirshberg) was published, concerning a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a former employee of the “Maya Food Industries Ltd.” factory in Mishor Adumim (Area C of the West Bank).
For years, Israel’s olive harvest has relied on 10,000 Palestinian workers (usually some 3000 families) from the West Bank who receive permits to work in Israel in the season. The sector employs these workers each year to pick tens of thousands of tons of olives from September to December, in groves stretching from the Negev to the Upper Galilee.
Three complaints were filed early August against an Israeli lawyer from Be’er Sheva, alleging that he illegally charged Palestinian workers from the West Bank thousands of shekels and traded work permits in Israel.
Israeli Policy Towards Palestinian Workers is wrong and Full of Contradictions, as it severely harms their need to make a living, and on the other hand, it destroys the Israeli economy without providing realistic alternatives.
In light of the total lockdown on the entry of Palestinian workers since the beginning of the war, two major labor organizations in Israel adopted a negative stance towards the return of Palestinian workers to their work in Israel.
MAAN joined other groups in filing a petition to the High Court of Justice against the Israeli government, demanding that authorities be held accountable to prevent the extreme exploitation of migrant workers, which could reach conditions of actual slavery. The petition, filed July 18th warns of the destructive impact of massive and unregulated importation of workers on the overall Israeli labor market, the severe harm to Palestinian workers’ ability to earn a living, and the expected damage to the Palestinian economy and regional security. The petitioners accuse the government of making these fateful decisions in secrecy.
