Jaffa's Day-Labor Market

With Gazan Workers, six to nine a.m.

by Asma Agbarieh

When the people of Jaffa's Gaza Street awake at dawn to begin a day's work, they see several dozen laborers waiting outside. The corner where they stand has served for years as an improvised employment bureau. The people of Gaza Street carp endlessly about the nuisance of the Gazan workers: they make a lot of noise, and besides, it is not very pleasant to wake up and see such specimens of desperate poverty. But the connection between Jaffa and Gaza is by no means easy to cut.

Just as Jaffa has its Gaza Street, so Gaza has its refugee camps named after Jaffan neighborhoods - Jebalya, for instance. Many of the hundred thousand refugees who fled to Gaza in 1948 were Jaffans. Among the Arabs and Jews who came and squatted in their houses were the families of those who complain about the Gazan workers today. There are two types of workers standing on Jaffa's Gaza street: those who have a monthly permit and those who do not. The ones with permits have a distinct advantage in getting work: the Israeli employers who stop in their cars will prefer them. The permits are expensive, however - and fictional: It used to be that if you qualified for a permit, you could go seek work in Israel. This is no longer the case. Israel grants permits today only to Gazans who already have work.

Those who really have work, of course, will be at their jobs - and not on Gaza street. Those who are here with permits have bought them. You pay an agent in Gaza one thousand NIS (New Israeli Shekels) per month. He goes to an Israeli contractor, who supplies a fictional statement that he wants to employ you. (After the first month, you also get a salary slip falsely indicating that you've worked the twelve-day minimum.) You go with this statement to Israel's Liaison Office. It supplies the permit, and you go each day to seek work. The travel costs you an additional 30 NIS per day. You wake up at 3 a.m., travel to the checkpoint and then board a bus to Jaffa. That is three hours coming, about two returning, plus the work time - if you are lucky enough to find work. One worker on Gaza Street says: "The PA (Palestinian Authority - Ed.) warns us not to buy the fictitious permit, because it's blatant extortion.

Yet the PA doesn't give us any alternative. Seven years after Oslo, all it can offer is temporary jobs at 20 NIS per day ($5.00) in ad hoc work like paving roads, and even that goes to people with family connections." There are also many that have no permits. They include most of the younger ones (their youth makes them a security risk in Israel's eyes). Some of these live illegally in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with about seven others, each contributing 250 NIS a month for the rent. Others have moved from Gaza to the West Bank, from which it is easier to sneak in. Still others may come by sneaking off the recently established "safe-passage" connecting Gaza to the Hebron area. Yusef, at 27, is a "security risk". He comes from the village of Bani Suheila in Gaza. He completed high school and is now a husband and father. In order to evade the Israeli checkpoints in Gaza, he went to live in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, where cousins from Gaza joined him. It is easier to sneak into Israel from there.

Yusef sleeps in the West Bank, works in Israel and visits his family in Gaza once or twice a month. Many young Gazans do likewise, he tells me. The workers seem eager to talk of their tribulations, and they show great interest in WAC (the Workers Advice Center). They are skeptical when we tell them we can solve the problems they have with the bosses. They seem to have grown accustomed to a reality in which they remain quite alone. They have no real trade unions. The existing ones, they tell us, are mere paper organizations belonging to the PA, and the PA does little beyond pressuring Israel to open additional jobs. While we talk, they keep a constant eye on the oncoming traffic. Whenever a car pulls up, our group dissolves like magic. They envelop the car, ten to a driver, showing permits if they have them, asking what kind of work it is - and, most important, the wage. If he offers 250 NIS per day (the wage of a skilled worker), they will accept at once. If he offers 100 NIS, they will weigh the matter carefully.

In any case, only a few get jobs, because the supply of laborers far outstrips demand. Three days' work is the maximum most can get in a week. They try not to lower the wage too much, but sometimes the need is too overwhelming. When some do lower it, this angers the others and strife begins. As the hours pass, they remember the emptiness waiting at home, and the price of a day's work drops. Rafat, 19 years old, worked in textiles in Gaza. He put in eight hours a day for a total of 25 NIS, thus making 600 NIS a month. With a single day's work in Tel Aviv at 150 NIS, he earns the equivalent of a week in Gaza. Such is the mathematical significance of "the new Middle East" promised by the Oslo Accords. Not all those standing at the Gaza Street "Employment Bureau" are laborers by profession.

Ziad of the town Rafah looks like the typical worker, but in fact he is a teacher for UNRWA most of the year. During summer vacation he attempts to increase his income, because as a teacher he makes only 1500 NIS ($370) per month. We knew this to be the salary of a teacher in the PA schools, but those in the UNRWA schools are supposed to earn 3500 NIS. At the PA's insistence, Ziad told us, new UNRWA teachers must sign a contract, stating they are willing to work at the PA wage. The PA is waiting to take over the UNRWA schools. It has no intention of paying the teachers there the relatively decent wage they've been getting - a wage that is still below average by Israeli standards. Thus Palestinians, young and old, seek an evasive livelihood on Gaza Street in Jaffa each morning. As one of them put it: "We're playing hide and seek with the air." Longing for the days of yore The workers remember other times: the days before the intifada, days when the bosses sought them out, picking them up in the refugee camps and driving them to work. Yusef from Jebalya looks younger than his 26 years. Today he supports five children. He has worked in Israel since he was 13. "I didn't even have an identity card," he says, "but those were the days before the permits. My boss would come to the camp and take me to work. After the Gulf War and the closure, everything changed. Suddenly I was allowed in only from the age of 30." The intifada, followed by the bombings in Israel, spurred the Israelis to new ideas.

Employers wanted a reliable labor force. The rebellious Palestinians had become unreliable. In addition, the government saw in the policy of closure a bargaining tool that could lower the price of a political settlement. Both birds could be managed with a single stone: Israel opened its gates to foreign workers, who today number 250,000. The Israeli labor market underwent a basic change. It was not only workers from distant lands, such as Thailand and Romania, who took the jobs of the Palestinians, but also Arabs from Jordan and Egypt. In addition, the Oslo Accords enabled Israeli firms to shift their plants to those Arab countries, where labor is even cheaper.

The Gazan workers on Gaza Street come up with a host of reasons, moral and practical, why Israel ought to give them preference. Here is Ahmad - he belongs to a refugee family from Jura village now living in the Gazan town of Beit Hanun: "The foreign workers have a state, but we don't. It's in Israel's interest to take care of us, because a hungry neighbor is not a good one. Apart from which, it's Israel that expelled us from our land, so at least it should give us work." Another worker chimes in with a piece of economic logic: "We buy Israeli goods and thus strengthen Israel's economy, but the foreign worker sends the money home - how does that benefit Israel?" In the final analysis, however, all who stand there know that the issue of foreign labor has long been decided. I point out, in response, that the same basic causes that bring the Gazans to Gaza Street have brought the foreign workers to Israel. They nod, but without any great outpourings of solidarity. In one key respect these workers differ from their foreign counterparts: they are connected to the local political reality. The state of the peace talks affects them, they say. "Ordinarily, the cops and officials leave us alone. But the moment the talks at Camp David broke down, suddenly they remembered us. That meant, for example, fines of 70 NIS when we'd stand on the street instead of the sidewalk."

Two hours later…

It is eight a.m. Those who remain will not likely work today. They are readier to talk. The eyes go less to the traffic. Yusef from Bani Suheila, for example, had earlier evaded most of our questions about life under the rule of the PA, contenting himself with hints like this: "It's impossible to find a worker who will speak his mind when he has to feed fifteen mouths. The position of the worker in society today is frozen. If you want the truth, he has no function whatsoever. If you open a door for him, you let him survive. If you close it, he starves to death." Later, however, Yusef agrees to express his views on the Camp David summit. "No one knows what happened there. They came back empty-handed. In the existing situation, though, I think that even if Arafat were to return without Jerusalem, nobody would oppose him. He's put the fear of God in us. We're at a stage where we don't ask what can be done. He has enough prisons to last us a hundred years. Israel too we endured to the point where we blew up. The same will happen with the PA, apparently.

The rage will grow until we explode." And the right of return? Most of the workers surrounding us are refugees. They understand that to realize the right of return would require a war. Says Yusef: "Most of us want to go back to our homes, but in the present circumstances this is impossible. All we want now is to live with dignity. We've made do with the territories of Gaza and the West Bank. One state next to another. But no! Israel isn't willing to settle even for that!" Ziad, a biology student, had long kept his views to himself. He came out now with an interesting position: "The Israeli aim is not just that Arafat should surrender on Jerusalem. They want the whole Arab world to agree, so the Arabs don't come later saying Arafat doesn't represent them. This is the condition the Israelis are setting. It's why they broke up the summit. They want the whole Arab world on its knees."

Toward nine one of the younger ones glances at the others. "Yallah, might as well get some sleep." Another day lost on the streets of Tel Aviv-Jaffa.