Vol. 73/No. 12      March 30, 2009

In February almost 20,000 workers were laid off in Israel, the highest number in one month in the country's history.

On March 8, 200 workers at the Off Haemek poultry plant near Haifa protested the decision by the owners to shut down the production line. The employer, the Jezreel Valley Agricultural Cooperative Society, refused to pay February wages. About 80 percent of the workers are Palestinian citizens of Israel, while the rest are Jewish.

According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, workers demonstrated outside the plant, burning tires and freeing chickens from their cages. The workers barricaded themselves inside the plant and "found an original way to assure themselves of income," Haaretz said. The workers "simply helped themselves to slaughtered, frozen fowls," the paper reported, "and sold them in the market."

The Histadrut, Israel's combined trade union federation and social agency with close ties to the Israeli state, issued a press release saying that "the workers who sold the chickens told people in the Haifa market to buy the chickens as a show of solidarity."

On February 23 at least 50 workers occupied the Pri Galil vegetable canning factory to protest plans to close that plant, which employs 150 year-round and 300 seasonal workers in Hatzor Haglilit, in northeast Israel near the Golan Heights.

Workers at the plant work 10-hour shifts and earn the minimum wage, about 21 shekels (US$5.00) an hour.

The next day workers protested outside the Haifa District Court chanting "Bread and work." They opposed the request by banks that had loaned money to the company to place it in receivership. Residents of Hatzor Haglilit held a one-day general strike to support workers fighting the closure.

Moti Hazizi, head of the Histadrut workers committee in the canning factory, told the court, "We do not want unemployment benefits, and no pity, just to be allowed to work."

According to Webhe Badarne, a former Pri Galil worker, about half the workers at the plant are Palestinian. The rest are Jewish workers from the area, including Russian and Ethiopian immigrants.

"It is normal for Jews, Arabs, Ethiopians, and Russians to work together," Badarne said in a phone interview from Haifa. "The capitalists violate everyone's rights. In political views we are different, but when we talk about issues like in Hagali, we are the same." Badarne is now director of Laborer's Voice, an organization that is trying to organize a Palestinian trade union.  
 
Role of temporary agencies
On top of the deepening economic crisis, Palestinian workers face additional discrimination and are often hired through employment agencies.

At Pri Galil, Bardane said, the company hires many workers through the agencies, fires them after nine months, then rehires them, to avoid making them permanent employees entitled to full benefits.

Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, said in a phone interview, "The rule is that the harder the work and the lower the salary, the more you have Arabs. The more sophisticated the work and the higher the salary, the fewer the Arabs."

Zahalka is a member of Balad, one of several parties based among Israeli Arabs that have won election to the Knesset.

While very few higher paid electrical or railroad workers in Israel are Palestinian, more than 22 percent of farm workers and 43 percent of construction workers are Palestinian.

On March 4 it was announced that the Hatzi Hinam store chain had bought Pri Galil and agreed to give the workers a 5 percent pay raise and to hire 100 more permanent workers.  
 
Palestinian women demand work
Palestinian women have also joined recent protests. On March 8 dozens marched through Tel Aviv demanding to be hired as farm workers.

"The government used to say that Arab women won't work because it was not a part of their culture, but with the way things are today, that's simply not true," Rada Wahida, an unemployed mother of four, told the daily Yedioth Ahronoth. "We want to provide for our families—we want to work, but there are simply no jobs."

The demonstration also had an anti-immigrant bent. "We have nothing against foreign workers, but their import must be stopped," Wahida said, because immigrants are often paid less than the minimum wage.

There are almost 100,000 "legal" immigrant workers in Israel and as many as 150,000 undocumented workers. Immigrants come from the Philippines, Thailand, India, Turkey, Nepal, China, the former Soviet Union, and Africa.  
 
Law of return
On March 15 the Israeli Supreme Court heard arguments from Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, challenging a law that bans family unification between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

The law, first passed in 2003 as a "temporary" measure and extended eight times, is aimed at Palestinians who are married to Israeli Palestinians, in an attempt to slow the growing number of Arab citizens of Israel, currently about 20 percent of the population.

The law is especially discriminatory against Israeli Palestinians because Israel's law of return grants Jews from around the world the right to emigrate and become citizens, while Palestinians originally from inside what is now Israel who fled or were expelled are denied the right to return.

"Most Palestinians in Israel have friends and families outside the country," said Orna Kohn, a senior attorney at Adalah, in a phone interview. "And this law directly affects some 20,000 families inside Israel."

Even getting a temporary permit is difficult, Kohn noted. Men who are married to Israeli Arabs can only apply, with no guarantee of approval, if they are 35 or older and women if they are 25 and older. "And even if you get a temporary permit," Kohn said. "It can be for six months or less. And with a temporary permit you are not allowed to work or even to drive a car, nor are you eligible for any government benefits."  
 
 
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