The Wait and Hope of Gaza Workers to Obtain Work Permits for Israel

At the Erez checkpoint, Gazans, all men, wait to be taken to various Israeli towns where they can work.

Here, February 23, 2022. AFP - MOHAMMED ABED

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

For the past few days, Gazan workers have been going to work in Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, the poverty rate is around 60%, unemployment hovers around 50% and since 2019, Israel has allowed some Gazans to come and work, provided they are a man over 26 years old, married and meet certain security criteria.

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With our correspondent in Ramallah

,

Alice Froussard

Before Hamas' takeover in 2007 and the Israeli blockade, around 120,000 Palestinians from Gaza worked in Israel, but the Jewish state then drastically reduced permits.

Israel then authorized, in 2019, some Gazans to come to work, but with the coronavirus pandemic, everything had been suspended for a year and a half.

At the Erez checkpoint there is now a queue of

Gazans

.

They are all men, exit permits and identity cards in hand, and they are heading towards the minibuses which will take them to the various Israeli cities: " 

I am 65 years old, but I have to go to work in Israel to support my sons, because they are all unemployed

 ,” says Kamal Hammada, a worker from Gaza.

Like him, many have no other alternative, as Rafat Almajaydeh, 46, from Gaza City, says: “ 

At the same time, there is no hope.

Since the 2008 war until now, since the blockade, nothing has changed.

So people just want to live normally, they want a job with a good salary that will allow them to feed their families.

Here, we can no longer hope for much, we do not believe in a better future.

 »

Workers paid five times more

In Israel, Gazan workers, mainly employed in the agricultural or construction sector, are paid between 250 and 700 shekels, or between 50 and 200 euros, and that is at least five times more than what they would earn if they worked in the coastal enclave.

And with the blockade since 2007, local work opportunities are reduced to nothing.

Everyone therefore hopes that Israel will allow more permits.

They may be released in the near future.

" 

In principle, according to the agreement, Israel must issue 30,000 work permits, and it could go up to 70,000 permits 

", specifies Sami al-Amsi, the president of the Gaza workers' union.

But, he confides, “

 we will have to wait to see if Israel will respect the agreement 

” and hope that social protection is put in place for all these Gaza workers, who do not always benefit from it.

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To read: Israel imposes on the Palestinians “a reality of apartheid in a post-apartheid world”, says a UN report

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