On Israel Forces Back, Workers Stuck in the West Bank: A Palestinian Zel’dovich-Rich Person Revisited

“My son, when I speak with him, I say, ‘How are you?’ and he tells me, ‘Baba, I write my name on my arm, in case I am killed,'” Zrain says. His son wants people to know who he is when he dies.

The United Nations believes some 50,000 people are seeking refuge from the Israeli strikes, and that his wife and five children are among them. He relishes every text message and every call, even if the news is chilling.

Zrain says he was separated from his wife and children in northern Gaza for about a month when he was in the West Bank. He may be in the West Bank physically, he says, but “My heart, my mind are not here.”

He looks at the pictures of his two young daughters. Seeing pictures of their smiling faces, before the war, helps him forget all the bad things that have happened, he says.

Alfarany has nearly two dozen nieces and nephews and says he gets overwhelmed thinking about all the children going through the trauma of war right now.

Source: As Israel forces workers from Gaza back, thousands more remain stuck in the West Bank

The Homestay of the Palestinian Workers in the Gaza Strip: Ibrahim Alfarany’s Room at Al-Istiqlal University in Jericho

“I had a video, but it disturbed me too much that I deleted it,” he says. I watched it four or five times and then said I would get rid of it.

His wife and kids survived an Israeli airstrike several weeks ago while seeking cover at a playground. There are no buildings left in his neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Gaza City, he says, and his house was among those destroyed.

Alfarany says he is very happy and relieved to know his brother is alive, though the life he and other family members are experiencing in Gaza is hard to watch from afar.

The Israeli military took Alfarany’s brother away from his home in Nahariya, in northern Israel, after he tried to get a bus to the West Bank. After losing contact for more than 20 days, Alfarany finally talked to his brother on Friday, as his brother was walking into Gaza along with thousands of other workers.

One of the Palestinian workers, Ibrahim Alfarany, has been staying at Al-Istiqlal University for more than three weeks. He travels back and forth between Israel and the Gaza Strip for a few weeks at a time, and sells vegetables in a store south of Tel Aviv.

It is a makeshift shelter, home to more than 400 workers from Gaza, one of several accommodations throughout the city. Thousands more laborers are taking shelter throughout the West Bank, including in the city of Ramallah.

At the Al-Istiqlal University campus in the Palestinian city of Jericho, laundry hangs from the windows. In larger halls, men lounge on mattresses pushed up against the walls, scrolling on their cellphones for news from Gaza. Their belongings are filled with plastic bags on the floor. There are communal sinks and an impromptu barber shop where you can get a shave and a trim if you join the wait list.

More than 18,000 work permits were given out by Israel to people from Gaza. Many were employed in restaurants, retail or construction — living in Israel short-term or coming daily, and sending money back home to their families.

Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7 have killed more than 9,000 people, 70% of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials. There are nearly 200,000 destroyed homes.

To return to Gaza, they would have to go through Israel — but they are not allowed to enter. Even if they could, there is no way of knowing how they would get to Gaza.

On Friday, they heard that thousands of other workers were forced to return to Gaza on foot from Israel and were dropped off several miles from the border.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip, and JERICHO, West Bank — News from Gaza comes in conversations in the hallway, over the communal sinks, between bunk beds, and texts and calls with relatives. Most of the world is 60 miles from them in the West Bank, even though they are stuck in makeshift shelters and camps.

Construction in Israel is on pause since the Gaza-based attack on Oct. 7, 2009, according to a construction worker in Tel Aviv

Outside of Tel Aviv, there is a half-built apartment building with wires hanging from the ceiling, piles of rebar rusting, and some water pooling in dirt around the foundation.

Normally, there would be 20 or 25 workers here, said project manager Bashar Jabareen, a Palestinian citizen of Israel. On this day in early November, he and a few other people are looking over the site to make sure no one has broken in.

Like most construction projects across Israel, work on these apartments has been on pause since Oct. 7, the day thousands of fighters from the Gaza-based militant group Hamas poured across the border into Israel, where they killed about 1,400 people and kidnapped hundreds of others.

About 13% of all employed Palestinians worked in Israel or Israeli settlements before the war, according to the International Monetary Fund. In addition to construction, many worked in agriculture or the service sector.

Left without those workers — and without alternative sources of labor, as Israeli reservists have been called to war and many foreign workers have fled the conflict — the construction industry in Israel is operating at 15% of its prewar capacity, according to the Israel Builders Association, an industry group.

“It’s a huge problem for the Israeli economy and we are working to find a solution,” Shay Pauzner said. “This is a place where every Israeli will feel the effects of the war in his pocket.”

And for Palestinians in the West Bank, the sudden shutoff of income has rippled through the economy, as workers struggle to pay their rent, car payments and children’s tuition. The longer it goes on, workers say, the more desperate their situations will become.

Both Israelis and Palestinians agreed that the current situation has no comparison to other hostilities between Israel and Hamas in recent years, when the worker permits returned relatively quickly.

If the handyman misses too much work, he is likely to be replaced by someone else. If the war lasts too long, a metalworker for construction sites said he was relieved that he had made sure his daughter’s tuition was paid.

Like many workers with Israeli permits, construction worker Raed said he chose to work for Israeli employers because the salary is higher. (Palestinian workers in the West Bank gave NPR only their first names due to concerns that Israel could deny them a work permit in the future.)

Raed has been unable to return since October 7, and he hasn’t been able to collect his wages in a month. Now, he has no income, he said, with a wife and two small children to feed.

What can I do? Raed doesn’t know if we’re going to go back or not. “On a financial level, I am destroyed. I don’t know how to support my family.

Source: Israel’s war with Hamas disrupts Palestinian workers and Israeli employers alike

Israel’s War of Independence and the Role of the Palestinian Authority in the War-Dominated West Bank: A Conversation with Nasser and Ben Gvir

At a small grocery store near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, the store owner, Nasser, constantly watches news about the war as he mans the checkout counter.

Regular customers can buy groceries on credit as needed, in normal times. The number of people asking to make purchases on credit has more than doubled since the beginning of the war, and the amount of money they owe has increased as well.

“When those who work in Israel put their money here, they move the economy,” said Mahmoud, an electrician. If there are no Israelis working in Israel, we don’t get any money. Everything stops. We’re turning on the same wheel.”

He has a problem because most people have no money to pay him. Those that do have savings are holding their money tight, in case the war drags on, he said.

When asked if he wanted the war to end so things would return to normal, he answered yes, but only if the Palestinians win and Israel isn’t involved.

He said that it is a sacrifice to get at least some of his rights one day. It won’t be like what my cousins in Gaza are going through, no matter how much I sacrifice.

“A person who leaves at five in the morning and returns at seven in the evening has no time for terrorism,” said Amit Gottlieb, the vice president of Gottlieb Construction, the company whose construction sites near Tel Aviv are paused. “This is a concept that I too believed in.”

But the chill on worker permits has extended to workers from the West Bank, who had long been seen as safer than those from Gaza, in part because the West Bank is run by the more moderate Palestinian Authority, as opposed to Hamas, which governs Gaza.

In a post on the social media site X last month, Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, said he was against the entry of thousands of PA workers who may endanger civilians.

“This situation has made everyone who hears Arabic fear that there are terrorists roaming around,” he said. Some mayors have asked construction companies to close sites out of security fears, he said.

Like almost all Israelis in the construction industry, Gottlieb has worked alongside Palestinians for his entire career. “We have a personal relationship with them, and even these days, I can say that I love them,” he said. I know my employees better than my friends.