Desperate Palestinians Sneak Into Israel to Work
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.

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.

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.

…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.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/21/international/middleeast/21WORK.html