Desperate Palestinians Sneak Into Israel to Work
By JOEL GREENBERG
AMRA, Israel — There was a time when Omar Abahira, a Palestinian from the West Bank, earned a decent living in Israel, putting up poles and cables for the Israeli telephone company, Bezek.
Now unemployed, he sat on the floor of a tin shack at the edge of a field outside this Israeli Arab village on a recent day, sharing a meager meal with his family after a day of backbreaking work picking cucumbers in the fierce summer sun.
Mr. Abahira, a father of 10 from the village of Al Yamun, near Jenin, is one of hundreds of jobless Palestinians from that area who have come to the fields of Tamra and neighboring Israeli Arab communities to earn some money to tide them over for a few more months.
They are here illegally, sneaking into Israel with their wives and children despite border closings that have prevented them from reaching their previous jobs in Israel for nearly two years.
The closings — a response to Palestinian attacks — have crippled the Palestinian economy and sent incomes plummeting. Israeli Army blockades of villages, and incursions into West Bank cities that have kept them under prolonged curfew, have paralyzed many shops, factories and construction sites.
Before a large-scale military sweep by the Israeli Army in April, the unemployment rate was above 38 percent in the West Bank and more than 46 percent in the Gaza Strip, according to United Nations figures based on Palestinian labor surveys.
Conditions have worsened considerably since then, but Israeli officials say the army's continued presence in West Bank cities is necessary to block Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed in such attacks during a 21-month Palestinian uprising.
To Mr. Abahira and others toiling in the fields, the restrictions have been devastating, driving them deep into poverty.
"I've never seen such a situation in my life," said Mr. Abahira, who is 45 but looks older. "There's no money or work, and I have to bring bread to my 10 children."
So the Abahiras and other families from the Jenin area, who found a way in through an Arab village that straddles the border, work 7 days a week, up to 10 hours a day, hoping to earn the equivalent of $1,600 per family for 40 days of labor.
Wearing hats and head scarves to ward off the sun, they work bent over the prickly cucumber plants that cover acres of land. The workers complain of backaches and leg pains after hours of stooping in the fields. They live in shacks of tin, wood and canvas without running water or electricity, use jerry-built outhouses made of planks and cloth, and cook on portable gas burners.
Despite the squalor, there are signs of an effort to maintain a semblance of dignity. Mattresses and bedding are neatly stacked along the sides of the shacks during the workday, laundered clothing hangs on lines, and after work people wash in makeshift stalls and change into fresh clothes.
Every so often, police officers sweep through the shanties, carting off scores of the illegal workers and sending them back to the West Bank. Those with a previous record of illegal entry are likely to be jailed for a month or more, along with their employers. But people trickle back, their need to work overwhelming fears of being caught again.
"It's a game of cat and mouse," said David Ben-Atias, the chief of police in Shefaram, a neighboring Israeli Arab town, whose officers have carried out the sweeps.
The Palestinians' desperation to work is matched by their employers' need for cheap manual labor. "No one else will do this job," said one farmer from Tamra.
Fayez Hushiyeh, 51, from Al Yamun, who was in the fields with his daughters, said that he had never sneaked into Israel before, but that times had gotten so hard that he had to take the risk. "I have no choice," he said. "We want to live, and there is no other way to make a living. It has never been this bad."
Mr. Hushiyeh said that he had been a construction worker in Israel for 12 years, but that since the start of the current uprising, his entry had been barred. Standing near his wood shelter, he said he dared not step out of the field, even to a nearby road, for fear of being arrested.
The simmering discontent of jobless Palestinians erupted recently in Gaza, when thousands of unemployed people marched on the office of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, demanding that the Palestinian Authority provide them with jobs or welfare payments.
[The Israeli government announced this month that it would allow up to 7,000 workers to enter Israel, but suspended the plan on July 17 after Palestinian attacks. Before the current uprising began in September 2000, nearly 150,000 Palestinians came to Israel to work in low-paying jobs, many at construction sites and in restaurants.]
Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer cautioned at a recent cabinet meeting that the worsening economic conditions created a pressure cooker that would breed more Palestinian violence. But there has been no sign that the blockades of West Bank cities will end soon.
As shadows lengthened over the field next to Tamra, Mr. Hushiyeh and his family finished sorting cucumbers and loading them into sacks. A relative said there was no telling how much money they would take home at the end of the month, because their paycheck depended on the size and market price of their harvest. The most important thing now, he said, was for the Israelis to lift the restrictions.
Mr. Hushiyeh agreed. "They should let the workers back in," he said. "Then, I hope, we'll be able to live in dignity."
Negotiations Resume
JERUSALEM, July 20 (Reuters) — Israeli-Palestinian talks on easing hardships suffered by 700,000 Palestinians under Israel's reoccupation of West Bank towns resumed tonight.
A team headed by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Minister Without Portfolio Danny Naveh met with a delegation led by the Palestinians' chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, Israeli media and Palestinian sources said. No quick agreement was likely.
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