"We built Israel," says Abbas, a young migrant worker from Salem. A decade ago, he began travelling illegally from the northern West Bank to Tel Aviv to work in construction. "We have no jobs, so the only option is to work in Israel."
Years ago, between 1948 and 1967, Palestinians sneaked across borders to work in their former fields in Israel. Those borders were erased after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and Sinai. After 1967, Palestinians both from Gaza and the West Bank began working on Israeli construction sites. Now, with the building of the separation wall in the West Bank, those borders exist again.
Although men over 35 years of age can obtain security clearance to enter Israel for work, the younger generation have no choice but to travel via the paths their fathers and grandfathers used to walk legally. They are, in effect, the ghost workers of the Israeli economy.
Israel began erecting the wall in 2002. It has since slithered deep into Palestinian land, and its checkpoints and restrictions have crippled the Palestinian economy. All the while, ghost workers - those who cross the border illegally - continue to be the bedrock of Israel's economy. Indeed, its central bureau of statistics says about half of the approximately 220,000 foreign workers in Israel are illegal, while the Palestinian Workers' Union estimates there are between 35,000 and 40,000 illegal workers in Israel.
***
Deir Al-Hatab is a village near the settlement of Elon Moreh in the northern West Bank. It was once the scene of violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli settlers. The villagers who fought the occupation now grow olives, but everywhere there is a sense of aftermath. Many of the villagers were sent to jail, many were militants, and today, many are blacklisted or forbidden from working in Israel.
At a small house in the village, a mother looks with pride more than grief at the posters of her son that cover a corner of the family's small living room. In the picture, Jalal, her son, stands in front of a mosque, the word shaheed(martyr) printed beneath his name. Tall, skinny, with high cheekbones, Jalal died in 2006, at age 26. He was shot by the Israeli army when the driver of the taxi he was travelling in tried to race away from soldiers at Hawara checkpoint.
"The driver took the settlement road to save time," Umm Jalal remembers. "When he saw that the soldiers had stopped two vans [full of] illegal workers he tried to escape; the boys asked him to stop, but he didn't." Jalal was killed outright and two other workers were wounded. There were mild protests from human rights organisations, but nothing has changed. "People will not stop going to work in Israel," says Ramzy Ouda, Jalal's brother.
They will not stop because Palestinians employed by Israeli contractors to build settlements earn three times more than those working for equivalent Palestinian employers, yet for Israelis this is still considered cheap labour.
***
In Wadi Fukin, eight kilometres from Bethlehem, the night is calm. The village is sandwiched between the Green Line and the separation wall. The village was destroyed in 1948 during fighting between the Israelis and Jordanians, which ended with a UN-backed ceasefire that became the Green Line on contemporary maps.
Wadi Fukin was the only Arab village permitted to be rebuilt after the 1967 war. The lights from settlements glitter across the valley, surrounding it on three sides.Source: http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/palestinian-ghosts-keep-the-israeli-economy-moving
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