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Rabat – Israel is making plans to replace thousands of its construction workers of different nationalities, mostly Palestinian, with Moroccan workers.
First reported by Moroccan news outlet 24Kech, which cites a source in Tel Aviv, the International Federation of Building and Wood Workers (IFBWW) in Israel is negotiating with various official authorities in Morocco.
Undermining Palestinians?
According to a 2019 report from UNCTAD, “Over 127,000 of Palestinian workers (24% of the West Bank employed workforce) are employed in Israel and settlements.”
The majority of Palestinians work in Israel’s construction sector, where they are estimated to make up 65-70 percent of the total workforce.
The report indicates that the Palestinian labor market’s reliance on Israel has been facilitated by a scarcity of low-skilled labor in Israel, particularly in agriculture and construction.
Attempts to fill the labor shortage with workers from Asia were initially unsuccessful because Palestinians return to the West Bank at the end of the workday; therefore, they won’t have a significant effect on Israel’s demographic structure, adds the report.
Questionable labor conditions
Among the member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Israel has one of the highest death rates among construction workers, reported the Business & Human Rights Resource Center in 2020.
Palestinian workers in the Israeli construction sector get their salaries deducted for “social benefits.” However, they receive none of these benefits that they are entitled to.
Labor-oriented Israeli NGO Kav LaOved has reported on the systematic violations of Palestinian workers’ rights. Its April 2021 report reveals that “34% of Palestinian construction workers still have to pay for Israeli permits; 84.7% have asked their employer for sick pay but only 7.8% have received it; 74.6% were not informed that they should have a pension fund; most workers do not receive a payslip on a regular basis as required by law; and authorities do not enforce workers’ rights.”
Israeli plan
Despite the importance of construction work to Palestinians, and the dangerous nature of Israel’s construction sector, Israel now appears to aim to attract Moroccans to replace Palestinian workers.
Read also: Morocco Business Delegation Heads to Israel
The newspaper said that if the Israeli federation manages to reach a mutual agreement with Morocco, then thousands of Moroccan construction workers will be asked to replace the current construction workers in Israel.
Negotiations are expected to see a breakthrough in the coming weeks, especially following further rapprochement between Morocco and Israel that resulted from the Negev summit at the end of last March.
The Israeli IFBWW is interested in plasterers, particularly those who specialize in plaster engraving. The Federation hopes to attract Moroccan professionals with monthly salaries ranging from MAD 20,000 ($2056) to MAD 30,000 ($3084), free housing, and transportation from and to their workstations.
Moroccan-Israeli relations
Following the resumption of diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel in 2020 as a result of the Abraham Accord, companies on both sides expressed interest in establishing joint ventures between the two countries.
The two countries have also collaborated economically and culturally. On March 20, the Moroccan Society for Tourism Engineers (SMIT) hosted a webinar with Israeli investors, and relations between Israeli and Moroccan economic and cultural actors have grown significantly in the last year.
Morocco, Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt attended the Negev Summit on March 27, in which Israel promised to share some of its advanced technical defense systems with the participating countries.
