125,000 Palestinians work in Israel – Israel keeps tight grip on economy

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SALFIT, West Bank, June 4, (Agencies): Fuad Maraita wakes up at 3:30 am His hometown of Salfit in the Israeli-occupied West Bank lies in darkness. He drinks coffee, slings a bag with his lunch over his shoulder, gets on a minibus and starts the grueling journey to his job laying tiles at a construction site near Tel Aviv. Maraita, 62, is among tens of thousands of Palestinians who make the trek to Israel every day. Fifty years after Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, this army of laborers is one of the most visible signs of the occupation. Israeli control has held back the Palestinian economy, making decentpaying jobs in the territories scarce. Stripped of choices, Palestinians work in Israel, where their average pay is the minimum wage— still more than double what they would earn at home. They build homes, fix cars and serve food.

Tradition
Laying tiles in Israel has become a Maraita family tradition, passed down from Maraita’s late father to him, his four brothers, and one of his sons. Salfit is just 30 miles from Tel Aviv, but Israeli travel restrictions keep him on the road for almost as much time each day as he spends working. Maraita believes the occupation won’t end anytime soon. “They (the Israelis) are not going anywhere,” he said. Some 125,000 Palestinians now work in Israel and in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

At peak times, a third of the West Bank’s workforce was employed in Israel, whose high-tech-driven economy is about 15 times larger than the Palestinian one. This lopsided relationship will loom large if President Donald Trump restarts Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The US administration believes strengthening the Palestinian economy would support future talks, but Israelis and Palestinians have different views of what that means. Palestinians say Israel must cut shackles now, rather than linking economic change to an elusive peace deal. They say it’s the only way to grow a sluggish economy held back by Israeli restrictions, including on Palestinian development in large parts of the West Bank where Jewish settlements are allowed to flourish.

Demands
“Our economic problems can’t wait,” said senior Palestinian economist Mohammed Mustafa who discussed such demands with the Trump administration. Israel has proposed improvements of the current system, such as trying to reduce bottlenecks at Israeli-run crossings that Palestinians say prevent them from trading competitively. Michael Oren, the Israeli government official who raised such ideas in Washington, said fundamental change has to wait for peace talks. In the meantime, Palestinians should keep working in Israel, he said. “If there is stability, there is less terror. If there is less terror, this gives us, the diplomats, more space to negotiate.”

Shortly after 5 am, Maraita reaches a crossing through Israel’s West Bank separation barrier. Hundreds of laborers make their way through a maze of rails, turnstiles and a metal detector. They place their bags on an airportstyle X-ray conveyor belt and press ID cards on a scanner. It’s a Thursday, turnout is relatively light and Maraita gets through in 10 minutes. At the start of the work week, it can take much longer, he said. At first, there were no barriers. With the outbreak of Palestinian unrest in the late 1980s, Israel began imposing security closures and a permit regime.

After a second Palestinian uprising in 2000, Israel built the barrier to channels Palestinian traffic into Israel through crossings to detect potential Palestinian attackers. Palestinians say the barrier is also a land grab because for long stretches it runs in the West Bank, not on the pre- 1967 frontier, slicing off about 10 percent of the land. Palestinians from Gaza have been banned from work in Israel since the 2007 takeover of Gaza by the Islamic militant Hamas. After emerging from the crossing, Maraita boards another bus, sitting behind his brother Ahed, 52. Some Israelis are pleasant, others racist, said Ahed, a tiler. “You have to endure it,” he said. At 6 am, the bus arrives at a coffee shop in the Tel Aviv area. Maraita chats with other customers as he waits for his employer. One of the regulars, Israeli contractor Ariel Schneider, believes Palestinians don’t need a state. “We need to make sure they (Palestinians) have work and everything will be fine,” he said.

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