Get more
than a Caravan
for lease.
Shaking An
Addiction
Fearful of terrorism, Israel seeks to end its
dependence on cheap Palestinian labor.
LARRY DERFNER ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
T
he servants are being
sent home. The crop-
pickers, the janitors, the
construction mules, the
grease monkeys — the
120,000 underpaid Palestin-
ian laborers who ride across
the Green Line each day to do
much of Israel's menial labor
— are in the process of losing
their jobs.
After living off this cheap
labor force since 1967, Israel
seems to have finally decided
that the cost in blood is too
high. Israelis are separating
from the Palestinians, and,
reluctantly, are rolling up
their sleeves to do the work
themselves.
"For the first four-to-six
weeks it will be tough, but in
four months nobody will even
remember that there were
Palestinians in the Israeli
economy," predicted econo-
mist Ezra Sadan, a leading
expert on the Palestinian
economy, in an interview with
Israel Radio.
This is an exaggeration. It
will take much more than
The new EuroVan GL.
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the Grand Caravan can be had for lease-
control, a central locking system, front-
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And even though EuroVan has more room
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Many Palestinians
depend upon jobs in
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customers by WV Credit, Inc. through participating retailers until 9/30/93. 48-month closed-end lease. Price based on $21.845 MSRP of a
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four months to replace all or
even most of the Palestinian
workers, but the principle is
correct — they are being re-
moved from the landscape. In
the past, after every Pales-
tinian terrorist attack on Is-
raelis, the right wing sent up
the call to kick all the West
Bank and Gaza workers out
of Israel. But every time the
territories were closed, Israeli
employerS would find them-
selves woefully short-handed;
the Palestinians, already
poor, would arrive at the
brink of destitution, and the
territories would reopen after
a few days.
The Palestinians would go
back to work and everything
would return to normal, until
the next attack.
But things have changed.
The terror is no longer inci-
dental, it is relentless. It's no
longer just the right wing that
wants the Palestinians out of
Israel, it's all of Jewish Israel -
- a wall-to-wall consensus,
including even the left-wing
Meretz party.
The economic conditions of
Israelis have changed —
there are now over 200,000 of
them unemployed, 11.2 per-
cent of the population, so
some, at least, are becoming
a little less picky about tak-
ing low-paid, menial jobs. And
for the many who still prefer
unemployment benefits, there
is the determined new Labor
and Social Affairs Minister
Ora Namir, who is forcing
them to take these jobs, and
making it tougher — and
more expensive — for Israeli
employers to hold onto their
cheap Palestinian help.
The process has been going
on for the last two months,
roughly since the upsurge in
terror began. The real turn-
ing point came on March 30,
after two policemen were shot
to death in Hadera.
The army sealed the West
Bank and Gaza at midnight,
preventing Palestinians from
crossing the Green Line until
further notice (probably after
Passover), and Israeli build-
ing contractors, farmers,
garage owners and an assort-
ment of other employers are
now scrambling to replace
them.
Suddenly it's like the 1930s
around here: everyone seems
to be talking about the need
for avodah Ivrit ("Hebrew la-
bor"), as if Israelis were still
old-time socialist Zionists in
horts and sandals.
By the thousands, unem-
loyed Russian immigrants,
abras and Israeli Arabs are
working in the fields har-
v esting flowers, and picking
p drills and hammers at con-
truction sites, working in
weatshops — doing the jobs
P alestinians were doing only
a few days before. Thousands
more soldiers and volunteers
a re helping out temporarily
0 n the farms. Replacing
P alestinian workers- with Is-
r aeli ones has become a na-
t ionwide patriotic mission.
But for all the fervor, it's
b een rough going. Farmers re-
ort losing millions of dollars
ecause the new hands don't
ork nearly as efficiently as