[News] Coronavirus: Palestinian workers left in the lurch as Israel reneges on containment plan

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/coronavirus-palestinian-workers-israel-reneges-deal-contain-pandemic
Coronavirus:
Palestinian workers left in the lurch as Israel reneges on containment plan
By Akram Al-Waara in Bethlehem, occupied West Bank
March 25, 2020
------------------------------

Palestinian labourers are being back to the occupied West Bank from Israel
after several cases of sick labourers being dumped at checkpoints along the
Green Line sparked outrage among Palestinians.

Over the past few days, a number of Palestinian labourers who work inside
Israel have been dropped off at checkpoints between Israel and the northern
West Bank after displaying symptoms of the novel coronavirus
<http://www.middleeasteye.org/topics/coronavirus> - also known as Covid-19.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/coronavirus-palestine-labourer-found-near-west-bank-checkpoint-covid19>

'They dumped him like trash': Palestinian with suspected coronavirus
symptoms thrown out of Israel

Video footage of a sickly, incapacitated worker lying on the ground for
hours outside a Ramallah-area checkpoint after being dumped there by
Israeli authorities went viral
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/coronavirus-palestine-labourer-found-near-west-bank-checkpoint-covid19>
earlier this week, calling into question Israel’s treatment of Palestinian
labourers.

Now, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is ordering all its citizens who work
in Israel to come back to the West Bank and enter a mandatory 14-day
quarantine, or risk facing unspecified penalties from the government.

"In light of the serious and successive developments in Israel, and the
expected movement restrictions, we ask all Palestinian workers to return to
their homes in order to protect them and preserve their safety,” PA Prime
Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said in a statement on Tuesday.

Last Thursday, Shtayyeh announced that Palestinians were now also barred
from working in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territory.

The move comes just days after thousands of workers hurried into Israel on
the promise that they would be given proper accommodation by their
employers and would be allowed to stay within Israeli overnight, in order
to avoid the spread of the virus in the West Bank - an opportunity for
countless workers to provide for their families amid heightened
unemployment during the pandemic.

But as workers continue to turn up at checkpoints with high fevers and
other symptoms, often dumped their by their employer or Israeli
authorities, it seems that the cost of working in Israel has become much
too high for Palestinian labourers.
Disturbing pattern

At least four incidents of Palestinian labourers being dropped at
checkpoints by Israeli forces have surfaced in the last few days.

On Monday, eyewitness Ibrahim Abu Safiya from the Ramallah-area village of
Beit Sira told Middle East Eye that he saw a Palestinian labourer, later
identified as Malek Jayousi, lying on the ground outside of the local
checkpoint with a high fever and trouble breathing.

Abu Safiya claimed that one day earlier, another labourer from the
al-Jalazun refugee camp in the Ramallah governorate had also turned up at
the Beit Sira checkpoint with a high fever, after his employer kicked him
out of his job in Israel.

The man, who was allegedly refused medical treatment in Israel, travelled
to the checkpoint alone via taxi before being transferred to Ramallah in an
ambulance.

On Tuesday night, local media reported that three labourers were dropped
off by Israeli authorities at a checkpoint outside Tulkarem, while another
was dropped outside the Jbara checkpoint near Hizma, in the central West
Bank.

Reports indicated that several of the workers were symptomatic, with high
fevers, some over 40 degrees. All the workers were reportedly tested for
the coronavirus by local Palestinian medics and ordered into isolation.

PA spokesman Ibrahim Melhem condemned the Israeli treatment of Palestinian
workers as “racist and inhumane”.

"If you have to work for a living, then let it be with dignity, and not in
this demeaning manner," he said in a statement, addressing the thousands of
labourers in Israel.

Ribal Kurdi, a 29-year-old activist from Bethlehem, told MEE that he was
both devastated and outraged when he saw the way workers exhibiting
symptoms of illness were being treated by Israeli authorities and employers.

“Israel wanted the workers to come into the country and work,” Kurdi said.
“But they didn’t want to be responsible when the workers got sick.

“The Israeli occupation should be responsible for the lives of the
Palestinian workers - for their healthcare, accommodation, everything,” he
said.
‘Employers have given us nothing’

According to rights groups, last week’s decision to allow workers to sleep
in Israel
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/coronavirus-palestine-workers-israel-bethlehem-choice-livelihood-isolation>
- a change from usual work permit policy - for an extended period of time
in order to prevent further spread of Covid-19 was flawed from the start.

Kav LaOved, an Israeli workers’ rights group, said in a statement
<https://www.facebook.com/kavlaovedps/posts/791457001376291>on Facebook on
18 March that “unfortunately, the majority of Israeli operators did not
fulfil the commitments they made to provide proper and healthy
accommodation for workers”.

Alongside photos of hundreds of workers stuck at an unidentified
checkpoint, the group also claimed that no measures were taken to “provide
health protection in case a worker is exposed” to the coronavirus.

According to Kav LaOved, approximately 60,000 Palestinians work in Israel,
primarily in construction and agriculture. Another 30,000 are estimated to
work in Israeli settlements across the West Bank.

The group, along with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and
Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, demanded that Israeli government -
specifically Defence Minister Naftali Bennett, who approved the entry of
the labourers - to protect the rights of Palestinian labourers during the
pandemic.

“We contacted the ministries of labour, security, and health to demand
government oversight of these workers' employment and their stay here, and
to safeguard their rights. We specifically called for bearable
accommodation and health care,” a spokesperson for ACRI told MEE.

But so far, the efforts by such groups seem to be futile.

One worker who was sleeping in Israel, who asked to be identified only as
A, told MEE that he and his fellow workers were forced to sleep on
cardboard sheets at the construction site where they worked, and were not
provided with any hygiene products like gloves, masks or hand sanitiser.

'Our employers have given us nothing'

*- A, Palestinian labourer in Israel*

“This is much different than what we were told we were getting into,” A
told MEE.

“Our employers have given us nothing, and if you get sick, they will just
send you back without any treatment.”

On Wednesday, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Palestine went
up to 62 - in contrast with more than 2,100 confirmed cases in Israel.

Wafa, the official news agency of the PA, reported that one of the new
confirmed cases, a woman in her 60s from the village of Biddu near
Ramallah, “may have contracted the disease from her sons who work in
Israel”.

Kurdi insisted that it was not the fault of labourers for going inside
Israel to work, saying “they had to choose between feeding their families
or getting sick”.

“This is a miserable situation,” he told MEE.

At the end of the day, he said, it’s the “Israeli occupation which is
responsible for now endangering the health of the entire West Bank”.
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