There are 150,000 Palestinian working in Israel. Almost two thirds of them are employed in the construction industry and the rest in industry, catering and agriculture. According to figures from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics processed by Dr. Haggay Etkes of the Bank of Israel's research department, 53,000 Palestinians are on legal employment programs, 39,000 are illegal workers, and 58,000 have purchased work permits. In the construction industry over 60% of the Palestinians holding work permits purchased them illegally from middle-men.
Shrinking the Conflict Initiative cofounder Jason Silverman says, "You can see this on Facebook. There are ads every day - permits for NIS 2,500. Responses says contact privately."
One of the aims of the Shrinking the Conflict Initiative is to ease conditions for Palestinians wanting to work in Israel. Research by the Bank of Israel in 2019 has similar findings. "Work permits of about 20,000 Palestinian employees, who represent about 30% of the Palestinian workers employed in Israel with a permit, were illegally purchased for an average monthly payment of about NIS 2,000, which is about 20% of the gross income."
The standard salary in Israel is twice as high
Employment in Israel is an important revenue stream for Palestinians and thus the importance of the permits. "The main restriction of a work permit is the family situation. You have to be at least 22 and married with children and receive security clearance from the Shin Bet," explains Itzik Gurevitch, Israel Builders Association VP manpower, economics and taxation.
But the biggest restriction is the obligation to be tied to a specific employer. Only through a prior agreement from that employer can the Palestinian worker come to work in practice. Through fictitious employers in Israel, many workers buy their right to pass through the checkpoints, and once in Israel can find "black" work from any willing employer. For this right, more than 50,000 Palestinians at any one time are prepared to pay thousands of shekels from their already low salaries.
There are those who claim that the problem is far smaller. Gurevitch, who previously served as the government's coordinator of activities in the administered territories claims that the problem involves a negligible percentage of employees. He says, "A myth has been created. Trading exists but a fictitious employer is also accountable, so the brokerage does not exist to the extent described. It's about 5%, no more." In other words, according to him, there only a few thousand. "Employers have no interest in working through profiteers, they want to know who they're working with," he adds.
This view conflicts directly with the figures from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), which the Bank of Israel's Haggay Etkes insists are reliable. "The PCBS survey has advantages and disadvantages. You have to know how many people are responding correctly to the PCBS, and how well they can calibrate the answers into a representative sample. They have a similar sampling frame based on the 2017 census. Each season in the survey has an 'inflating factor'. The reliability of the coefficient depends on the sample frame. For comparison - the Israeli sample frame is from 2008, and they are only now updating it."
"When we got to the checkpoint, all the people we talked to paid for the permit," says Silverman from the Shrinking the Conflict Initiative. "To say it's 5% - I understand the interest in protecting the employers, but the public interest is to show the true scope of the phenomenon. If the Builders Association has other data - let them present it."
Only five indictments since 2013
MAAN Workers Association director Assaf Adiv, which supports the welfare of Palestinian workers in Israel also claims that the PCBS data are probably accurate.
In 2021, Kav Laoved disadvantaged workers organization conducted a survey of Palestinian workers at the checkpoints coming into Israel and found that 34% of them were still paying for their work permits. These figures are lower than those of the PCBS, but far higher than those presented by the Israel Builders Association.
According to the Shrinking the Conflict Initiative, which submitted a request to Israel Police, under the Freedom of Information Act, between 2102 and 2021 only 28 indictments were filed for "unlawful brokering" in work permits (23 of them in 2012), and just one in ten years for employing somebody illegally.
According to Adiv, the employers are actually the ones who drive the business. They ask for work permits, and they sell them on to middlemen - who profit at the expense of the workers. "There are well-known crime families on both sides of the green line that are involved in the permit-trafficking industry," Silverman also says. "When we see a profiteer who can issue a permit immediately, it means that an employer gives the connection details to Israel's government system to the Palestinian profiteer."
But Gurvevitch at the Builders Association insists that he knows nothing about any such phenomenon.
Adiv says, "As long as the distribution of permits is in the hands of the employers, there will be trade in them. In December 2020, they initiated a reform that was supposed to transfer the search for employees to a dedicated app and thus combat trade in permits, but in practice the middlemen took over that as well, and since then trade in permits has increased even more. An employer who operates according to the law has no interest in working with a middleman, but an employer who wants to resell the permits he receives - of course he has."
The solution: Employment through a manpower company
How is it possible to solve the problem? Apparently the cost of the permit is simply the difference between the demand for work in Israel and the supply of permits. But in the practice, the number of permits has been growing and the middlemen have taken control of the numbers that have been added.
Etkes said, "The existing regulation results in workers in the construction industry who move between employers with high frequency preferring to buy a work permit or work illegally because in practice, in order not to lose the permit, they need to be continuously employed, even though it is technically possible to move between employers."
This creates a situation in which a worker that wants to move between employers simply cannot do so because they might lose their work permit. But a worker with a fictitious employer has much higher flexibility.
There are two potential solutions. The first is employment through job agencies, which is the acceptable model for finding employment for foreign workers in other countries. These employment agencies can be a solution for employers who need workers for specific projects, so that employees can switch from job to job without fear of losing their permits. In 2022, then Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked set up a team to examine this possibility, and the Population Authority says that the team's conclusions will be submitted in a few months.
The Shrinking the Conflict Initiative supports this concept of employment agencies as a model without coercion. On the other hand, MAAN proposes a "green card" model for Palestinian workers who have passed security clearance, which would allow them to enter Israel and work in any job they want.
But Silverman stresses that there are difficult problems. "On the one hand, a green card would make it easier for workers to move between employers in a truly free way. But this means that there is no control over where they are, and this is a security problem - even though everyone undergoes a Shin Bet review. It is impossible to know if the green card holders are actually working and if the permits are being used correctly. If someone sits on his green card, he would prevent entry by those who really can and need to work in Israel." But of course, even when a Palestinian worker purchases a permit and actually works for a different employer, we encounter the same security problem.
Silverman adds that giving out work permits in a standardized way should not harm security. He says, "There are few with the permit who carry out terrorist attacks. The permit actually allows the Shin Bet to track people and this strengthens security." Until the regulatory tangle is resolved, middlemen will continue to profit at the expense of the low wages of the Palestinian workers. Regarding the extent of the phenomenon of work permit trafficking, the sources contradict each other.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on April 27, 2023.
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