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By Theia Chatelle
This article was originally published by Truthout
Israel is choking off financial prospects in the West Bank, pushing Palestinians there toward a breaking point.
If it had not been stopped at an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank, the garbage truck carrying more than 70 Palestinian laborers seeking work would likely have been able to enter Israel without incident.
But on April 13, the driver was held outside the Israeli settlement of Ariel for failure to carry a license fit for the vehicle, and upon further inspection, Israeli border police discovered dozens of workers hiding inside the truck’s garbage compartment, on the verge of suffocation.
The Palestinians were held at gunpoint on suspicion of “attempted infiltration,” according to the Israeli authorities, or in other words, attempting to cross the “Green Line” into Israel without a permit.
But as Haaretz reported, the Palestinian laborers were all unarmed and were only attempting to enter Israel in order to work. They had paid smugglers thousands of shekels in the hopes of passing through the checkpoint, allowing them to earn wages in Israel before returning to their families.
The incident captured the desperation of Palestinians living in the West Bank, who are facing an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions: GDP has contracted by around 17 percent since October 7, and unemployment currently sits at around 28 percent.
Two factors are at play: Israel’s closure of permit access for Palestinian laborers from the West Bank, and the withholding of Palestinian Authority (PA) revenues by far right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, all of which has brought the economy to a functional standstill.
On the eve of October 7, 2023, more than 100,000 Palestinians from the West Bank held permits to enter Israel as laborers, and even more entered without permits, primarily in the construction and agriculture industries.
Wages in Israel are more than double those in the West Bank, and jobs are easier to find. The longstanding permit policy was just as much an attempt by the Israeli government to capitalize on the cheap labor costs of Palestinian workers.
Since Israel occupied the West Bank after the Six-Day War in 1967, Palestinian laborers have long been an integral part of Israel’s economy, including in its illegal settlements. Many Palestinians built the very settlements that surrounded their home villages, on land that the state had requisitioned.
All of this changed after October 7, when Israel imposed a complete and immediate ban on entry for Palestinian workers. This shut off a critical economic lifeline for the Palestinian economy, which had come to depend on the cash injection from the comparatively higher salaries paid inside Israel, even in the agriculture and construction industries in which Palestinian workers primarily worked.
Hop in a taxi in Ramallah and the driver has likely once held one of those work permits, but was forced to find other work after they were revoked.
Abdelrahim Abu Ahmad, 32, was one of those workers. He is from the Palestinian village of Bir Nabala, which was once a white-collar stronghold on the outskirts of Jerusalem until the separation barrier cut it off from the Jerusalem municipality.
Abu Ahmad depended on the wages he earned working construction in Israel to support himself and his three children. “But now we have nothing,” he said. “I go to work, maybe have one or two people in the taxi by lunch, and it’s barely enough to cover gas.”
Abu Ahmad is not alone. Ride the bus from the heart of Jerusalem toward Ramallah, and as you pass the separation barrier in Beit Hanina and on the edge of al-Ram, two Palestinian communities located within the Jerusalem municipality but cut off from the West Bank, you might see Palestinian laborers descending the wall, dodging the concertina wire at the top, and climbing down a rope on the other side.
Doing so last week, I watched five Palestinians, lucky not to be caught by the Israeli military, hurriedly climb down from a makeshift rope before running off. Under Israeli military policy, any illegal crossing of the separation wall constitutes an infiltration attempt. It carries a hefty prison sentence, and in many cases, those caught are shot on sight.
The Israeli military has killed at least 13 Palestinians and injured at least 170 others crossing the barrier since October 7, 2023, according to the United Nations, though the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions puts the figure closer to 50. Abu Ahmad knows this and said he will likely attempt to cross anyway: “I have nothing to lose. We can’t buy bread, my children are skipping meals, and I have debt to pay.”
Even during the First and Second Intifadas, when Israeli authorities imposed significant movement restrictions within the West Bank in tandem with their military operations, including Operation Defensive Shield, launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in April 2002, the economic collapse was only temporary.
After the fighting subsided and strikes in protest of Israeli authorities were put on hold, economic activity largely returned to normal, an analyst at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute confirmed to Truthout.
Debt loads have skyrocketed in the West Bank, both for consumers and for the PA itself, which is approaching insolvency after Smotrich cut off its revenue after October 7, 2023.
Per the Oslo Accords, Israel is obligated to distribute tax revenue it collects on behalf of the PA, but in the wake of October 7, citing payments the PA makes to relatives of those held in Israeli prisons, Smotrich has withheld those revenues altogether.
The Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute condemned the action, stating that “politically motivated suspensions or conditional transfers exceed the scope of the agreement and therefore constitute a form of economic coercion, particularly when used to influence PA actions in diplomatic or legal arenas.”
The result has been a follow-on effect, forcing the Palestinian Authority to cut salaries for more than 140,000 public sector workers. Employees are being paid only 50 percent of their salaries and are still months behind. The PA submitted a funding request to the European Union and donor countries, but it was turned down.
Shadya Saif, 40, has felt the effects of the revenue cuts acutely. She teaches at a private girls’ school in Ramallah, and her child has a rare form of muscular dystrophy requiring frequent treatment at Ramallah Government Hospital. “I worry about when we will not be able to bring my daughter in for treatment,” she said. “She is always sick or dealing with an infection because of her weak immune system. We are trying to keep up with the bills, but if we are not paid soon, we won’t know what to do.”
Ramallah’s community Facebook groups, which were once filled with questions about where to purchase specific brands of American hair products or makeup, are now filled with anonymous pleas from neighbors for food donations. This sense of economic desperation has become commonplace even in the West Bank’s largest cities.
As reported by Middle East Eye in January, Ramallah is far from alone.
“This is absolutely unheard of, that Palestinians would ask for aid from their neighbors. Even in areas hardest-hit by settler violence, we would often distribute aid packages, but nobody would take them,” Abbas Melhem, executive director of the Palestinian Farmers Union, told Truthout in an interview at their offices in al-Bireh. “Now we get 50 calls a day asking for food distribution. People have had to abandon their shame out of desperation.”
It is just one indication of how fast economic conditions have deteriorated since October 7. “They have reached a breaking point,” said Melhem, warning that it is only a matter of time before the tension explodes.
This article was originally published by Truthout and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Please maintain all links and credits in accordance with our republishing guidelines.
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