Workers in the PA: Better salaries force Palestinian workers to Israel

Laborer from Hebron, Qassem Abu Hadwan: "The lack of monitoring of [Palestinian] owners of companies and factories and their exploitation of workers is what has forced people to Israel, to work and build in Israel. If only [the salary here in the PA] was at least half of the salary [in Israel]… no one would work in Israel. However, workers have to go to Israel, because no one [in the PA] gives them what they deserve for their work, whether in factories or in companies, and even in municipalities..."

Official PA TV host: "Do you think that the low income and exploitation by [Palestinian] factory and workshop owners are what force people to go [to work] within the Green Line [in Israel] or in the settlements?"

Laborer from Hebron, Qassem Abu Hadwan: "It is what forces the workers to Israel. Even though the Israelis exploit them, they give them what they are entitled to. In the end, when a worker goes to Israel and earns 200 or 180 shekels [a day] as opposed to what he earns here [in the PA], 50, 70, or 100 shekels, then he says: A month's work here equals a week's work there [in Israel]. How can it be compared?"

Official PA TV host: “We need investments and for workers’ rights to be honored. What motivates the workers, as we said, to go [to work in] the interior (i.e., Israel) or to the settlements is the exploitation that takes place [in the PA] and the low income... They [the workers] spoke about 12 hour days in construction work in the Palestinian market, as opposed to 8 hours in the Israeli interior."