Palestinians in West Bank risk crossing Israel’s barrier to flee failing economy
Yatta: At dawn in mid-May, Sayyed Ayyed and dozens of other unemployed Palestinian men gathered at the foot of the towering wall of concrete and barbed wire dividing the occupied West Bank from Israel.
A smuggler was there with a ladder and ropes. Each man handed over the equivalent of $100. Ayyed waited his turn as others clambered over.
The 30-year-old father of two young daughters hadn’t found work for a year. Debts were mounting. Rent had to be paid. On the Israeli side, there was the lure of work on a construction site. He just had to get over the wall.
“When we reach the point where you see that your children do not have food,” he said, “the barrier of fear is broken.”
A year of war in Gaza has reverberated across the West Bank, where the World Bank warns the economy is at risk of collapse because of Israeli restrictions barring Palestinian laborers from entering the country for work, and the biggest wave of violence in decades.
Unemployment has skyrocketed, reaching 30% from around 12% before the war. The past year, some 300,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, many of whom worked in Israel, have lost their jobs, the Palestinian Economy Ministry says. Over the first quarter of 2024, the territory’s economy contracted by 25%, according to the World Bank.
Desperate for jobs, some Palestinians are resorting to smuggling themselves at great personal risk through the guarded barrier and into Israel.
When they find them, Israeli security forces arrest them — or at times open fire. There are no official figures from Palestinian authorities about workers killed or injured by Israeli gunfire trying to cross the barrier. The Associated Press spoke to families of three Palestinians who said their relatives were killed trying to sneak across.
“These people are being shot at trying to go to work,” said Assaf Adiv, director of MAAN, a worker’s association that focuses on Palestinian labor rights.
Before the war, some 150,000 Palestinians from the West Bank were crossing legally every day into Israel to work, mainly in construction, manufacturing and agriculture.
After Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Israeli authorities barred entry to most Palestinians, saying it was necessary for security. Tens of thousands of Palestinians became jobless overnight.
Eyad al-Najjar, a 47-year-old laborer from a village near the West Bank town of Yatta, slipped into Israel through a barbed-wire section of the barrier in July, earning the equivalent of $650 for a week’s work, his family said.
