Palestinians forced to seek work in Israel

by Joseph Krauss

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Every day they sneak into Israel by the dozens under the eyes of the soldiers at checkpoints -- a stream of Palestinian labourers from the occupied West Bank desperate for work.

"We are always looking for new methods -- if the Israelis crack down on refrigerated lorries we use ambulances, if they start stopping ambulances we use hearses," says Abu Ali, a smuggler who granted a rare interview to AFP on the condition his real name and the name of his village be kept quiet.

Sometimes it's a simple question of timing -- Abu Ali claims he once sneaked 97 workers across in the luggage compartment of a bus because it passed through a checkpoint at dusk, when the sun was in the soldiers' eyes.

The covert commute testifies to the economic despair in the occupied West Bank and calls into question Israel's claim that its controversial separation barrier keeps Palestinians from entering clandestinely.

The vehicles are driven by Israelis, either Jews or Arabs, who are part of smuggling rings that straddle the boundaries of the conflict and often include Jewish settlers, soldiers and bribed checkpoint officials, Abu Ali says.

He charges around 50 dollars per person, but says he pockets less than 10 of it, with the rest paying the other people involved in the ring.

The sheer number of workers using his services has allowed him to build a new three-storey house and made him one of the wealthier residents in his village.

Israeli police have arrested more than 16,000 undocumented Palestinian workers since the start of the year, releasing the vast majority after a few hours, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

"Our units respond immediately, number one because of the possibility of terror infiltration. But in a majority of cases the suspects claim they are coming in for work purposes," he says.

Abu Ali insists he would never help an aspiring suicide bomber to enter for fear of being caught by Israeli security forces. "The Israelis catch them before they ever leave the West Bank 95 percent of the time," he says.

The labourers who sneak in can make up to 50 dollars a day at construction sites and factories in Israel, up to four or five times what they would make in the West Bank, where work is scarce.

"The economic situation is so desperate in the Palestinian territories that people are willing to endure all kinds of hardships to enter," says Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.

Long dependent on employment inside Israel and its settlements, the Palestinian economy was sent into a tailspin with the restrictions on movement of goods and people Israel imposed on the West Bank after the second Intifada, which erupted in September 2000.

Before that, some 146,000 Palestinians were working inside Israel or the settlements, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Today, only 45,000 Palestinians have permits to work either inside Israel or in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, the army says.

In 2008, unemployment in the Palestinian territory stood at 20 percent and gross domestic product (GDP) grew by around four percent, according to the IMF.

"The need for work is always going to be greater than the fear of getting caught and what will be done to you," says Michaeli.

Her rights group says border police frequently abuse workers caught trying to sneak in, which Michaeli says is in part meant as deterrence as the legal system cannot handle the large numbers of violators.

"Theoretically you could detain them, but the system would collapse," she says. "The police and the border police develop their own methods to deal with it, and these include violence, humiliation and other unlawful means."

Last month B'Tselem documented an incident in which Israeli border police halted a poorly-ventilated refrigerator lorry packed with more than 60 workers and refused to let anyone out for more than two hours.

"It was horrible," said one man who was involved. "I felt as if I was suffocating and couldn?t breathe. The policemen didn't let anybody go out, and they didn't bring us water, even though we asked repeatedly."

The workers eventually used their cell phones to alert rights groups.

Rosenfeld said authorities investigate all accusations of abuse, but that in the vast majority of cases the smuggled people are quickly sent back to the West Bank.

Workers smuggled into Israel usually stay for a week or two at a time, facing more hardship as they hide from authorities and hope they are not turned in by their employers. Many sleep in abandoned houses, factories, or outside in construction sites.

"They might work for a day or even a week and not get any money. And they make much less than minimum wage" of 3,850 shekels per month (992 dollars, 704 euros), says Roy Wagner of Kav LaOved, an Israeli organisation that runs a hotline for undocumented labourers.

Wagner estimates the number of illegal labourers currently working matches or exceeds the 45,000 who have permits, which are generally given only to older men with children and no record of security-related offences.

And the permits can be revoked at any time.

"There are no transparent criteria and that allows the security services to extort the workers into cooperation," Wagner says. "People lose their permits for things like traffic violations or for reasons they never find out about."

Abid, a tile-worker and former "client" of Abu Ali, recently managed to acquire an entrance permit.

The 44-year-old, who asked that his full name not be used for fear of losing his permit, was arrested more than a dozen times when he was sneaking in but says he had to keep entering in order to support his five children.

Now as a legal worker he makes his way to the checkpoint every morning at 4:00 am to stand in line so he can be at work near Tel Aviv by 8:00.

"I would prefer to enter with the smugglers," he says with a smile. "Now every time I go through I have to get a full-body X-ray. That can't be healthy."