Hussein Jamil held a permit to work in Israel for 22 years until thewar on Gazabroke out. Now, after setting up a greenhouse in a West Bank village, he swore he will never go back.
Harvesting his tomatoes in the occupied West Bank, the 46-year-old said his former Israeli boss has already called several times to ask him to return. “But I told him that I would never go back to work there,” he said in Bayt Dajan near Nablus, the northern West Bank’s commercial centre.
There, dozens of men have returned to the traditional pursuit of tilling the land, rather than board buses to queue at the heavily guarded checkpoints that lead into Israel.
Israel stopped issuing work permits for Palestinians after the October 7 attack by Hamas militants, which ignited Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.
Mr. Jamil was one of 2,00,000 Palestinians from the West Bank who were working in Israel legally or illegally, according to the Palestinian General Confederation of Labour. Many of those workers are now busy in the greenhouses that have sprouted up in recent months on the hillsides where, Palestinian elders said, their ancestors once grew wheat. Working this way, “we are independent and peaceful,” said Mr. Jamil, adding: “It is much better than working in Israel. Here we work on our land.”
Salaries in Israel are more than double what Palestinians can make in the occupied territories, according to the World Bank. Economic prospects have dived since the war, with West Bank unemployment leaping from 12.9% to 32% in the final three months of 2023.
Published - August 13, 2024 09:46 am IST
