By December 2010, Haaretz reported the Palestinian Authority was forced to reconsider its ban on Arab employment in Yehudah and Shomron because the number of Arabs working in Israeli settlements had ballooned from 12,000 to 35,000.
Today, that number is even bigger as Israel is becoming the largest employer of Palestinian Arabs:
As the Arab countries continue to impose strict employment restrictions on Palestinians, Israel is opening its doors to Palestinian workers from the West Bank. Palestinians say, in fact, that Israel is becoming one of the largest employers of Palestinians in the Middle East.According to the report, a Palestinian construction laborer will often earn more than a senior ministry official in the Palestinian Authority or the Hamas administration. (If only Abbas knew this, maybe he wouldn't be insisting on staying in power nearly 4 years after his term in office has ended!)
Figures released this week by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in Ramallah showed that at least 80,000 Palestinians were now working in Israel and even in Jewish settlements.
In the first quarter of 2012, according to the bureau, there were only 77,000 Palestinians working in Israel and the settlements. In the second quarter of the ear, the number grew to 80,000; and earlier this week, the Israeli government issued work permits to another 10,000 Palestinians from the West Bank.
The numbers are on factor in the results of a survey Jackson Diehl wrote about last year by Pechter Middle East Polls indicating that Arabs living in East Jerusalem are not eager to live in a Palestinian state:
The awkward fact is that the 270,000 Arabs who live in East Jerusalem may not be very enthusiastic about joining Palestine. The survey, which was designed and supervised by former State Department Middle East researcher David Pollock, found that only 30 percent said they would prefer to be citizens of Palestine in a two-state solution, while 35 percent said they would choose Israeli citizenship. (The rest said they didn't know or refused to answer.) Forty percent said they would consider moving to another neighborhood in order to become a citizen of Israel rather than Palestine, and 54 percent said that if their neighborhood were assigned to Israel, they would not move to Palestine.You can read a detailed analysis of the poll and how it was done here.
The Arabs surveyed indicated they prefer the jobs, schools, health care and welfare benefits that Israel has to offer to what is available in a Palestinian state.
One point that surprised Diehl is that:
Remarkably, 56 percent said they traveled inside Israel at least once a week; 60 percent said access to its Mediterranean beaches was "very important" or "moderately important" to them.
This is in spite of the existence of discrimination.
One reason for that may be that the issue is not just that Israel pays Palestinian Arabs better salaries than what other Arab countries offer--the fact is there is anti-Palestinian discrimination in other Arab countries that want no part of the Palestinian Arabs:
The Arab world, which once used to absorb hundreds of thousands of Palestinian employees, is beginning to close its doors in the face of Palestinians. Many of the Arab countries accuse the Palestinians of being ungrateful. Others do not want to see Palestinians at all: they consider Palestinians troublemakers and a source of instability.But of course, no one -- not the Palestinian Arabs themselves, nor the pro-Palestinian apologists nor even the West -- talks about the anti-Palestinian prejudice that exists in the Arab world.
Some Arab countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Kuwait and Jordan even impose apartheid-like regulations and laws that prevent Palestinians from earning a decent living.
See Jordan Joins Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya In Denying Entry To Palestinian Arabs
Apparently, those who claim to be friends of the Palestinian Arabs actually hate Israel more than they sympathize with the Palestinians. That goes not only for the Arab states, but for members of the BDS movement as well.
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A shame really. Per the yawpings of the far left they should all be fired in order to comply with BDS.
ReplyDeleteAs it is, boycotting Israeli goods, whether from inside Yehudah and Shomron or not, will endanger the jobs and livelihoods of Arab workers.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't think that will phase the BDS activists.
I don't think they care much more about the Palestinian Arabs then the Arab countries that talk a good game, but discriminate against them in their own countries.