Unemployment in the Gaza Strip stands at 44% but since 2021 permits to work in Israel have been issued in small numbers
About 17,000 economic travel permits were issued in 2022, more than the total since the siege began – although this still represents only a fraction of the 500,000 people who used to travel for work each month before 2007. Most are given to married men over the age of 25 to work in agriculture and construction.
It took months to find someone in Gaza working in Israel who was willing to talk to the Guardian and let our reporter shadow him for the day. Few want to take any risks that may endanger their hard-won permits, for which most people must pass stringent Israeli security checks, negotiate Hamas bureaucracy and pay brokers who connect them with employers on the other side for 20% of their earnings.
My work schedule is never really steady for more than a few weeks at a time, depending on what work I can get. Normally I would need to leave home in a shared taxi to get to Erez for 4am, but at the moment I am working night shifts, so I can leave later, around 9am, to get to the factory in the north of Israel before my shift starts.
Most of us are employed illegally and we have no rights. Once I didn’t get paid at the end of the day and there was nothing I could do about it. Another time I was hit in the face by a steel beam at a construction site but I couldn’t go to hospital because I do not have insurance. Right now I’m working in the packaging department of a food factory on the night shift, which starts at 6pm. It’s pretty organised and I don’t have to worry about not getting paid at the end of the day; they’ve been good like that. One of the managers I am quite friendly with. He said he didn’t know that people from Gaza were not all terrorists.
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