Settlements and exploitation in the Jordan Valley

This week UK Customs and Excise have at last taken the first step in challenging the Israeli's illegal settlements by (a) recognising that they are mislabelling their produce to avoid paying tax to any European countries they export to and (b) proposing that the EU act to stop this practice. The news reports in the UK and Israeli press have spoken about illegal Israeli settlements, but have failed to explain the impact that these settlements have on the everyday lives of Palestinians and their hopes of establishing a viable state.
I have spent the last three weeks in the Jordan Valley, which makes up almost 30% of the West Bank: Palestinian land in the eyes of the world, but virtually annexed by Israel. Travelling around the Jordan Valley you cannot help but be overwhelmed by the mass of settlements, farming fruit, vegetables, flowers, herbs and animals on an industrial scale, using cheap labour from local Palestinians and migrant Thai workers. In contrast we visited numerous Palestinian villages that, without exception, have had their land and water confiscated for use by the settlements and numerous military bases in the area.
We met many Palestinians who work in four different illegal Israeli settlements in the northern Jordan Valley. When we asked about how the produce in the settlement was packaged we got some quite confusing answers, but then the truth began to emerge. It seems that many of the boxes are now labelled ‘Produce of the Jordan Valley’ or ‘Produce of the West Bank’, but until a couple of months ago it was more likely to be labelled ‘Produce of Israel’. We are not able to ask the settler’s for the reason for this change, but one Palestinian man we spoke to made a fairly educated guess: “Because of the boycott”. Could it be that the settlements knew in advance about the UK Customs and Excise investigation and changed their practices accordingly? We don’t know the answer to this question, so we can only guess.
The young men we spoke to are uniformly paid 60 shekels per day (£10) for an 8 hour shift. In comparison a regular wage in Israel is 500 shekels per day. Every single settlement worker we spoke to said that they do not have a contract, or a pension, or entitlement to sick pay. This is not only the case with young men who have been working for the settlements for a short time. We met two older men who had been working for the same settler for over 20 years, and still only earn 75 shekels per day and had absolutely no employment rights.
One young man told us about an accident he had at work when the top of his finger was sliced off by a blade on one of the grading machines. He was given the money to pay for his first visit to a doctor, but not the cost of transport to get there, or wages for the time he had to then take off work. Another man told us of an accident he witnessed when two men fell off a fork lift truck that was lifting them into the date palms. They both sustained serious injuries but their medical care was not paid for, and they received no wages whilst they were off work.
We also asked about sick pay and the response was always the same: "If you are sick and cannot go to work you loose your job".
We heard about the appalling working conditions and humiliation that Palestinian workers in Israeli settlements have to endure. However, to challenge these, to answer back, or to attempt to act collectively through a union will have one result: they get the sack.
On top of these appalling employment conditions many of the Palestinians working in the settlements have to travel through checkpoints to get to work. One night, travelling back from the Jordan Valley at about 7pm we saw about 20 young men and boys get out of a lorry to walk through the checkpoint. The youngest of them looked no older than 13 years old. Several of them were wearing catering style hair nets that suggested they probably work in the packing houses. They were made to stand in a line at the checkpoint as the soldiers asked all the children to come forward first and asked the usual questions:
"Where are you coming from?"
"Mahola settlement"
"Where are you going?"
"Tayasir village"
No doubt this is part of their daily ritual, despite the fact that they have permits from the settlements and the army proving their entitlement to work in the settlements.
A few days later we were again travelling through the same checkpoint at around 6pm. This time we saw a lorry drop off lots of young men and children, this time travelling from Tayasir to a settlement in the Jordan Valley. They were clearly on their way to work a night shift and this time the youngest looked no older than 16 years.
The working conditions in the settlements is just one way in which they impact on the Palestinian population. Please see our other blogs about confiscation of land, homes, water and electricity supplies. We heard not only about what has happened to Palestinians since 1948, but the way in which this still continues every day.
Every bit of produce from a settlement is grown on land stolen from Palestinians in the last 40 years or in the last few months, is nurtured by Palestinians who’s parents or grandparents probably owned that land they are working on as wage slaves, and is irrigated with water that would otherwise irrigate Palestinian land.
I have removed names of people and the settlements that they work in so as to avoid them loosing their jobs or being persecuted for speaking to us.