House of Fair Trade Newsletter #2: Palestinian workers in Israel

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Written by Andrew Pappone Andrew Pappone

Published: 06 January 2008 06 January 2008

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Dear Friends and Supporters,
 
One of the most serious effects of the occupation is the creation of an extremely dire economic situation within the West Bank and Gaza.   In Gaza, Israel has cut off fuel supplies and frequently blocked shipments of humanitarian relief goods from the UN, EU, and USAID.  As a result, patients have died in hospitals without the necessary medication, and people have been forced to ration their food and fuel consumption.  
 
In order for Palestinians to undertake development projects to benefit themselves permits must usually be obtained from Israel.   In the West Bank for example, Palestinians normally need permits to dig a well, fix a road, or build an office building.  With unemployment in the Jenin area hovering around 70%, many people do whatever is necessary to find money for necessities and also to pay for higher education.   With no other options, many (even those with university degrees) have turned to illegally entering Israel to find jobs as construction workers or general laborers.
 
A few days ago I was shown a video taken by one of the workers of the living conditions Palestinians face in Israel.   Because Palestinians cannot buy homes in Israel, and because it is too dangerous in most cases for sympathetic Israelis to house them, Palestinians sleep outside in the hills and mountains near their work sites.   The temperature at night is around 40-45 degrees Fahrenheit and workers use only a plastic sheet to cover them in the hopes that if a soldier sees a piece of plastic he is more likely to pass by thinking it's simply a piece of trash on the ground.   During the video, one 19 year old was shown shivering in the early morning.  Even if offered sleeping bags and tents, workers are thankful but turn them down, saying that having these objects will only make their capture more likely.
 
During the day, the Palestinians work on construction sites normally run by Arab-Israelis.  Working from 7am to 6 or even 10pm workers earn under 10 shekels ( USD2.50) per hour a fraction of what an Israeli doing the same job will earn.  Still, with a good wage in the West Bank being USD400/month for about 55 hours a week, the amount of money that can be made in Israel is relatively large.   Working 11 hours a day and seven days a week, a worker can hope to make around USD750 per month.
 
Of course, working illegally in Israel does not come without its risks.  To enter, Palestinians hire Arab Israeli drivers, put 25 people in large vans and drive quickly through holes in the wall (the barrier Israel is constructing to take more Palestinian land).   A few days ago one of these overloaded vans crashed near Jerusalem, killing four of its occupants.  Once inside Israel, Palestinians face a constant threat of being caught.   The Israeli government has a special force, the Belash, whose sole responsibility is to search for and arrest illegal workers.   Every night this force combs the hills and areas around Arab-Israeli cities looking for workers who sleep in the mountains under olive trees.  If a worker is injured going to the hospital is out of the question as hospitals will call the police and the worker will be jailed.
 
Take the case of Loai, a 22-year-old university student attending An-Najah University in Nablus.  Each summer, Loai  goes to Israel in the hopes of earning enough money to pay his tuition the next year.   Loai was injured when he fell through a ceiling in a building he was working on.  Injuring his hand and arm (an injury that sill affects him today), Loai was unable to go to the hospital until the next morning when he returned to the West Bank.   For the whole night he sat outside while his friends attempted to stop the bleeding and dig shards of glass and chunks of concrete out of his arm.  When I spoke to Loai last year he said that whenever he thought about going back to Israel he imagined even worse things happening (if caught a second time workers can sometimes spend up to a year in jail) but said that if he had no chance to work in the West Bank he might end up returning.   Next week, Loai will return to work in the Nazareth area.  He has been home for about two weeks since his last job in Israel, visiting his family and friends for the Eid season.
 
Workers have been beaten by police, shot in the leg, jailed for years, paralyzed, and otherwise injured.  With no way for Palestinians to create jobs in Palestine more and more young people will be forced to go to work in Israel to continue their educations, or help their families put food on the table.
 
On a hopeful note, organizations like the PFTA (Palestine Fair Trade Association) provide ways for Palestinians to participate in their own economic development and simultaneously resist the occupation.   By farming old trees and planting new ones, the PFTA is able to both establish "facts on the ground" instantiating land ownership by Palestinians and reduce the dependence of the Palestinian population on the Israeli economy.
 
Thanks for reading and stay warm.
 
Salaam
Andrew Pappone

Note: Though usually sent on Monday this issue was sent on Sunday, January 6 as Monday this week is a national holiday in Palestine (Eastern Orthodox Christmas).  The next scheduled issue will be sent on Monday, January 14 though there may be another update before then.
 
The House of Fair Trade Newsletter is a weekly email newsletter sent from the offices of the Palestine Fair Trade Association in Jenin, Palestine with stories and experiences from the ground in Palestine.  You are receiving this email because you or someone you know asked me to put you on the list.  If you do not wish to receive these updates, please let me know.
If you know of anyone who would like to subscribe to this email list, please have them email me with the word "subscribe".   I welcome any questions or comments.
For past issues please contact me or visit auphr.org.

 

 

Olmert: Israel Not Living Up to Road Map

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Written by AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer

Published: 04 January 2008 04 January 2008

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JERUSALEM (AP) - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in an unprecedented public acknowledgment, called continued Israeli construction in West Bank settlements a breach of Israel's obligations under a recently revived peace plan.

The remarks, published Friday in The Jerusalem Post daily, came just days before President Bush arrives in the region to build on the momentum created at a Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md.

Bush, in a separate interview, urged Israel to uphold its commitment to remove the settlement outposts in the West Bank.

``The Israeli government announced that it plans to get rid of the unauthorized outposts, and that's what we expect them to do. We expect the Israeli government to honor its commitments,'' Bush told the daily Yediot Ahronot in the interview, published Friday in Hebrew.

Israel has long maintained it has the right to continue building in existing settlements to account for ``natural growth'' of the existing population - something the peace plan explicitly bans. But Olmert acknowledged that Israel was not honoring its commitments - a significant development because Israel has never before admitted it was violating the internationally backed ``road map'' peace plan.

``There is a certain contradiction in this between what we're actually seeing and what we ourselves promised,'' Olmert said.

``Obligations are not only to be demanded of others, but they must also be honored by ourselves. So there is a certain problem here,'' he was quoted as saying.

The comments build on Olmert's recent efforts to defuse friction over construction in disputed territories. Construction plans announced after the Annapolis conference have antagonized the Palestinians and disrupted fledgling peace talks, renewed after seven years of simmering violence.

Olmert added, however, that Israel believes a Bush letter to the Israeli government in 2004 ``renders flexible to a degree what is written in the road map.''

In that letter, Bush wrote that ``existing Israeli population centers'' should be taken into consideration when the final borders of a Palestinian state are drawn. Israel interprets this to mean it can hold on to major West Bank settlement blocs, where the majority of its 270,000 settlers live, and where much of the contentious construction is going on.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat welcomed Olmert's remarks. When both sides admit they are not carrying out their pledges, that ``should be the way for both of us to carry out our obligations,'' Erekat said.

The two sides have agreed that the foundation for any accord would be the road map, which was to have led to the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005, but languished shortly after it was presented in 2003 because neither side met initial obligations. Under the first of the plan's three phases, Israel was to have halted West Bank settlement construction and the Palestinians were to have clamped down on militants.

Settlement construction has been a key obstacle to past peace talks. After recent construction plans announced by lower-level bureaucrats stymied the renewed negotiations, Olmert ordered last week that all new construction receive his approval. He did not, however, halt construction that was in progress.

Meanwhile, an Olmert confidant said Israel might soon begin dismantling some of the more than 100 unauthorized outposts settlers have erected - another peace plan obligation.

``I hope and also believe that in the near future, during the U.S. president's visit to Israel and afterwards, real steps will be taken to remove those outposts,'' Vice Premier Haim Ramon told Israel Radio.

Settlers have set up the outposts - mostly small encampments - in an effort to break up territory Palestinians claim for a future state. The road map obliges Israel to take down about two dozen erected after Ariel Sharon became prime minister in 2001.

Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip for their future state. Israel captured all three territories in the 1967 Mideast war. It immediately annexed east Jerusalem but left Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation.

Israel has stepped up efforts to make peace with the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, ever since the Islamic Hamas routed Abbas' Fatah forces and took over Gaza in June. At Annapolis, both sides set a December 2008 target - the end of Bush's tenure - for reaching a final deal.

Olmert told The Jerusalem Post that a peace agreement might not be reached this year as Bush hopes. But Bush has not applied any pressure on Israel to advance in the negotiations, Olmert said.

With both sides aiming to work out a final peace deal by the end of the year, Israel has demanded that Abbas crack down on militants, while carrying out its own operations against extremists in the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas has introduced a security plan for the West Bank, but has no influence in Gaza.

Two Hamas gunmen were shot and killed by Israeli troops along Gaza's border with Israel before dawn Friday. That brought to 11 the number of Palestinians killed since Thursday, when militants struck a major Israeli town with a more powerful rocket than they usually fire.

Four of the 11 Gazans killed were civilians.

A rocket fired Friday from Gaza damaged a house in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, but no injuries were immediately reported.

Our violent presence

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Written by Amira Hass Amira Hass

Published: 03 January 2008 03 January 2008

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There is no Israeli whose presence in the West Bank is neutral. Civilian or armed, soldier or woman settler, resident of a quality-of-life settlement or a nearby outpost, MahsomWatch activist or guest at a settlement, Bezek worker or client at a Palestinian garage. All of them, all of us, are in this Palestinian territory, in the West Bank, because our state occupied it in 1967.

The presence of every Israeli in the West Bank is based on a regime of privilege that developed out of that primary act of occupation. We have the privilege of hiking in Palestinian areas to our heart's content, of buying subsidized housing for Jews only on the lands of Bethlehem, of raising cherries and grapes in the wadis of Hebron, of quarrying on the mountain slopes, of driving on roads whose land was expropriated from the indigenous inhabitants for public use.

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Israeli army continue to attack Nablus city, 33 injured among them four critical

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Written by Ghassan Bannoura - IMEMC News Ghassan Bannoura - IMEMC News

Published: 03 January 2008 03 January 2008

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Palestinian medical sources in Nablus city located in the northern part of the West Bank reported on Thursday midday that the Israeli army had injured 33 Palestinian civilians among them four critically injured, during the continuing military offensive targeting the city.

The offensive started on Thursday at dawn as Israeli troops, supported by dozens of armored vehicles and jeeps, invaded Nablus and imposed a curfew in the Old City and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Soldiers started a wide scale house to house search campaign targeting what the army calls "wanted Palestinians". A number of civilians were kidnapped during the early morning house searches, witnesses said.

Dr. Ghassan Hamdan director of the Union of the Palestinian Medical Relief committees told IMEMC that 33 Palestinians have been injured by army fire since this morning and four of those are in a critical condition. Hamadan added that the army is chasing local youths all over the city.

This week the Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, visited Israeli troops stationed around the city of Nablus, Israeli sources said that Barak told his military commanders that the army should operate against all resistance factions in the city especially fighters of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Of the 33 Palestinians injured, 4 are children and 1 is an ambulance driver. The army has surrounded the hospitals and are attacking ambulances.