An Indian employee in Israel was killed and several other migrant workers injured on March 4, 2024 missile attack launched from Lebanon by Hezbollah allied with Hamas.
These should not the first migrant workers in Israel to be caught up in the months-long fighting. Dozens of other farmers, agricultural apprentices and caregivers from countries including Thailand, Nepal, Tanzania, Cambodia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Moldova have been murdered or taken hostage during the October 7 Hamas attack.
A big number of non-Israeli workers affected by the current war surprised some viewers while shedding light on Israel’s dependence on temporary migrant workers.
But as researchers investigating spread of migrant workers around the world we know the way labor migration programs have modified just about all societies, including Israel. The long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict has shaped the history of Israeli migrant workers and contributed to the globalization of labor in the Middle East.
Global history
The initial recruitment of foreign workers to Israel, which began in the Nineteen Seventies trend after World War II which has resulted in higher-income countries – equivalent to the United States, France and West Germany – signing agreements to recruit migrant workers with poorer countries. These poorer countries, which included, amongst others, Mexico, Spain and Turkey overcame their initial reluctance to lose some of their population and began to see emigration as a modernization strategy. The idea was that emigrants could acquire modern agricultural or industrial skills abroad while sending money to spur development in their home communities.
In the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties many countries in South and Southeast Asia have begun to advertise the export of migrant workers as a key element of their economic development strategies. At the same time, host countries he became addicted on the idea of a versatile, temporary workforce that might not trigger anti-immigrant sentiment as much as more settled migrants apparently did.
Israel’s relationship with Thai workers initially stemmed from U.S. support for the 1979 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. US government recruited Thai workers who once worked on Vietnam-era US military bases in northeastern Thailand, helping to construct a brand new air force base in Israel.
The arrival of Thai migrant workers alongside Portuguese workers has sparked public controversy amongst Israeli lawmakers, trade unionists and the media over the creation of a divided labor market, based on a study by one of us showed. Meanwhile, others apprehensive that the workers’ presence violated Zionist dictates guaranteeing a Jewish majority.
Ilia Yefimovich/picture Alliance via Getty Images
The Israeli government is attempting to resolve these contradictions he began experimenting with a migration policy designed for a brand new category of workers – neither Jews nor Palestinians – who were to stay separate from Israeli society.
Ten years later, in a unique political moment, these political ideas became concrete in a brand new category of people in Israel: “foreign worker“
Growing recruitment
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict pushed the “foreign workers” policy forward. Although Israel was founded on the ideology of “avoda ivrit,” or Hebrew work, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967 has led to the recruitment of a whole lot of hundreds of Palestinian workers who’ve change into a horny low paid labor.
They soon recovered constitute 7% of employees in the entire Israeli labor market, 24% of workers in the agricultural sector and 60% in the construction sector.
Non-citizen Palestinian workers commuted day by day to work from the West Bank and Gaza, controlled by: permit regime and regulations.
When the first Palestinian rebellion, or intifada, began in 1987, some members of Israeli society began to view such workers as security threat.
The 1993 Oslo Accords, which were intended to foment “separation” between Israelis and Palestinians, further pushed Israel to attenuate its dependence on non-citizen Palestinian workers.
To fill in the gaps, Israeli employers convinced the government to significantly expand the recruitment of temporary workers to exchange them. In addition to Thailand, countries equivalent to China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Romania and Turkey have recognized the opportunity and allowed Israeli employers to recruit inside their borders. Until 2003, migrant workers they constituted 10% of the workforce in Israel.
Creating marginal workers
Migrant workers in Israel, like their counterparts around the world, are long gone susceptible to exploitation.
Many of their countries of origin didn’t demand commitment to securing the rights of their residents in the form of: bilateral agreement on worker recruitment. And migrant workers through private recruitment channels needed to pay hundreds of dollars in illegal registration fees, which caused them to start out their journey deep in debt.
Meanwhile, Israeli government policy has attempted to just do that keep migrants out of society through confinement to specific industries, obliging them to depart the country after the end of their employment contract, excluding them from labor law public health system AND prohibition them from marrying or engaging in romantic relationships while in Israel.
The authorities didn’t attach much importance to labor standards, leaving, for instance, agricultural workers sensitive Down theft of earningsterrible housing conditions and exposure to pesticides without adequate protection.
Under pressure from the U.S. government and Israeli civil society over the past decade, Israel began signing the agreement bilateral agreements with migrant-sending countries. Thanks to this, excessive recruitment fees were eliminated, even in the event that they failed in order to significantly improve working conditions.
Still, the number of migrant workers has increased it grew slowly but continuously. In 2022, a complete of 73,000 migrants in Israel worked as caregivers, and almost 50,000 combined in the construction and agricultural sectors.
Marcus Yam/LA Times via Getty Images
However, these migrants didn’t eliminate the need for possessions Palestinian work in the mixture. Until October 7, 2023, roughly 100,000 Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank crossed the border day by day.
In a harmful way
As of October 7, Israeli authorities have revoked the work permits of these Palestinians and have attempted to achieve this hire hundreds of latest employees to fields and construction sites to fill the gaps.
Malawi, the country that it began to matter on migrant remittances a long time before Thailand, sent 700 farm workers and I promise nevertheless, one other 9,000 are on the way criticism from the votes inside the African nation itself.
In India, which has long sent caregivers to Israel, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government ignored internal criticism and sent more workers to Israel in the wake of the October 7 attack, including Pat Nibin Maxwellman killed in Hezbollah attack on March 4.
Workers like Maxwell are currently being sent to work near the borders of Lebanon and Gaza, where they work in farming communities vulnerable to the Hamas and Hezbollah attacks which have occurred exhausted from the evacuation inhabitants of Israel.
Although foreign governments are in a position to guarantee their residents little protection in Israel, hundreds lined up in their countries searching for a contract.
Once in Israel, they join the overwhelming majority of migrant workers who’ve chosen to stay in the country despite the October 7 attack and its aftermath.
Like hundreds of thousands of workers migrating around the world in search of economic progress or survival, they’ve for now calculated that earning higher wages abroad is price taking significant personal risks.
Helping to sustain Israel’s wartime economy, these migrant workers remain in the path of rockets – as the death of Pat Nibin Maxwell illustrates.
