The human suffering, the destruction of property and infrastructure and the collapse of the entire economy could not be more obvious than it is now, after Israel’s most recent devastating military onslaught on the Gaza Strip and its population of almost 1.5 million people. Tens of thousands are left dead, permanently incapacitated, homeless and unable to sustain an independent living. Humanitarian aid slowly trickles in, dependent on the bureaucracy of the occupation.
However, as always, there is more than meets the eye.
Until not so long ago, approximately 25,000 Gazans used to work for Israeli employers in Israeli towns and in the Erez industrial zone. Since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, the Gazan workforce had gradually lost their jobs inside Israel until the last Gazan worker was effectively cut off from employment and social security in Israel after the “hermetic” closure of the Gaza Strip in 2004. Most of these workers are now trapped in Gaza, unemployed and dependent on foreign aid.
Project History
Early in 2008, a worker from Gaza contacted Sawt el-Amel by telephone on behalf of a group of workers from Gaza City. All had worked for the same Israeli employer in two carpentry shops in Ramle (central Israel) and Erez (Israeli industrial zone at Gaza border) and lost access to their workplaces after the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000 and the hermetic closure of the Gaza Strip in 2004. None of them had received any compensation in form of benefits or severance pay. Most of them are unemployed now, their families dependent on foreign aid. Subsequently, Sawt el-Amel began collecting background information and testimonies from the Gazan workers in order to sue their former Israeli employer for compensation. Moreover, Sawt el-Amel’s Legal Department started researching the legal basis for potential claims.
(Sawt el-Amel's Gaza field worker Yussef Abu Kameel)
In December 2008, Sawt el-Amel submitted the first individual compensation claims of 13 workers from Gaza to the Israeli labour courts, totaling 1 million shekels (USD 260,000/EUR 200,000) of lost salaries and social security entitlements.
As an Arab workers’ organisation registered in Israel, Sawt el-Amel is in a unique position to contribute to the improvement of employment rights of Palestinians from the oPt (formerly) working inside Israel and in areas of the oPt where Israeli labour law applies.
Background:
Palestinians from the occupied territories working inside Israel
In 1987, before the outbreak of the first intifada, 110,000 Palestinian residents of the oPt - 40% of the entire Palestinian workforce - were employed inside Israel. In the course of the intifada and Oslo Process, Israel gradually changed its policy and restricted the granting of work permits to Palestinian residents of the oPt. As of today, only about 15,000 Palestinian residents of the oPt legally work inside Israel, as well as an estimated further 30,000 to 35,000 clandestine workers. Another 18,000 to 20,000 Palestinians work in Israeli settlement colonies and industrial zones in the West Bank. According to civil society and government research, Palestinian workers on average earn about half the minimum wage of NIS 20 per hour. Most Palestinian residents working inside Israel, or in areas where Israeli labour law applies, have no social security coverage such as health insurance, pension schemes, and unemployment and work accident insurances, leaving themselves and their families without social protection. Therefore, Palestinian residents of the oPt who work inside Israel or for Israeli employers in the West Bank settlements and industrial zones are extremely vulnerable to the growing informalisation of the labour market, which is characterised by unprotected or even unacknowledged employment, often coordinated by manpower companies, subcontractors, or on the workers’ own account.
Most of the 25,000 workers from Gaza who have lost their jobs in Israel between 2000 and today have made this bitter experience and are left without income and compensation. For workers from the West Bank, this prospect becomes more and more likely with the continued building of the Separation Wall and ever-tighter conditions for obtaining work permits. Moreover, also Israeli workers – Palestinian, Jewish and migrant workers – who work in the same low-wage sectors, are faced with similar problems caused by informal and/or unprotected employment.
Gaza
Recent reports by international aid organisations (1) - published before the recent war on Gaza - have summarised the humanitarian situation of Gaza’s working class under Israeli blockade:
The number of people living in absolute poverty in Gaza has increased sharply. Today, 80% of families in Gaza rely on humanitarian aid compared to 63% in 2006;
Unemployment in Gaza is close to 40% and is set to rise to 50%;
At present, 95% of Gaza’s industrial operations are suspended because they cannot access inputs for production nor can they export what they produce;
In June 2005, there were 3,900 factories in Gaza employing 35,000 people. One and a half years later, in December 2007, there were just 195 left employing only 1,700;
The lack of employment has been compounded by Israel ending its reliance on cheap labour from Gaza. In September 2000, some 24,000 Palestinians crossed out of Gaza every day to work in Israel. Today that figure is zero.
(1) Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Cafod, Care, Medecins du Monde UK, Oxfam UK, Save the Children UK, Trocaire, The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion (March 2008).
