I'm going through interviews and observations I have about a cluster of villages between Ramallah and Salfit. My primary interest is in the creation of land markets in these areas. However, I also spent a lot of time talking to people about where they worked. Many young men - if they are lucky - find jobs in Israel or the settlements.
Both of these conversations are from 2013. The first was with one the younger sons of a father I was staying with. He was back from work, and his face was terribly sunburned as a result of working paving streets during the summer. From my fieldnotes:
He has worked there for three months, previously worked as a laborer in Ramallah, where he learned to work with glass and metal. Not happy with it there, seems mostly because the pay was terrible. Now he works in Jerusalem for 150 NIS a day for a company. Sneaks in through Qalandiya, in a big private car. 200 NIS for the ride, someone arranges things with the soldiers, pays them off. It doesn’t always work, he says.
He works all around Israel, but sleeps in Jerusalem. His coworkers are also Palestinians. Jerusalem is the most dangerous spot to work, because of the high police presence: you can’t work in hotels or restaurants without a permit, because of the high possibility of getting your ID checked. He worries about the checks. When you are Arab, young, walking along Yaffa St. or somewhere else it is quite possible you’ll get stopped and checked for ID. He stays for big chunks of time inside, working in different cities, and then having a vacation a few days back home. He has been doing this three months.
When we talked this morning, he was heading back down to Jerusalem. It’s ours, he said, and nothing can stop us from entering. He also talked about how things used to be, about how when he was little they used to be able to go to the beach, to come and go as they pleased.
He has been arrested twice, related to his involvement in the al-Nabi Saleh demonstrations. Not held long, just for a interrogation. But enough to mean that he can’t get a permit, and is barred from working in the settlements (not that he wanted to, but lots of young men work in the settlements). He said he used to go a lot to the demonstrations, was friends with Bassem, was there when he was killed. But after all of this, he said, he wondered what the point was.
There were two things. The first is that Israel is huge. Its not going anywhere. The second is that there is no support from the PA. So what are they supposed to do? I just want peace, he said, and I’ll take anything. He said that before he started to work in Israel, he imagined it to be something small and tiny. He was truly shocked about how developed, entrenched it is. He spoke more on the PA. If it is unable to provide jobs to keep people out of the settlements, what is it good for? It needs to build factories, to produce things.
Jerusalemites, he said, they don’t really like to do the heavy work that the guys from the West Bank come in to do. They see it as below them, prefer lighter work. Not all, but most. But they treat each other well, with respect. People often take advantage of the workers, don’t pay them, etc. He found a good boss through people he knows, someone who is not going to cheat him. He was proud of his work; the boss needs him, not the other way around.
This second young man is from the same village. He was 22 in 2013, and recently married:
M. is from [x] and was telling me that he studied at Najah. Design, possibly carpentry. He couldn’t find any work, so he went to work in the Burqan industrial zone. He says everyone from the village works in the settlement. There is no other choice, and you also make double what you would make doing similar work, if you could find it, at a Palestinian factory.
He was critical of the calls that Palestinians leave the settlements, and started talking about a scheme, presumably from the PA, to bring all the settlement workers out and find them jobs in the West Bank. This, he said, obviously didn’t happen.
He asked if I had seen the industrial zone in Beitunya, and told me that the whole thing is the size of one of the settlement factories. In terms of scale, it seems, there is just nowhere for Palestinian workers to go. He needs the job, he said, because life is so expensive. It’s not like Jordan, where things are cheap and its possible to get by on less: the high pay from the settlements/Israel is required if one wants to maintain a family.
He asked if I was surprised to hear all of this, and then showed me a special permit that he carries around with his ID. It is a permit to enter the factory, and it doesn’t allow one to go beyond that. I didn’t know these sorts of permits existed, and that settlement labor was so regimented.