Hussein Jamil had a work permit in Israel for 22 years until the war in Gaza broke out. Now that he has built a greenhouse in a West Bank village, he vows never to return.
While harvesting his tomatoes in the occupied West Bank, the 46-year-old says his former Israeli boss has called him several times and asked him to come back.
“But I told him I would never go back there to work,” he says in Bayt Dajan near Nablus, the commercial center in the northern West Bank.
There, dozens of men are returning to their traditional occupation, working in the fields, instead of getting on buses and queuing at the heavily guarded checkpoints at the border with Israel.
“It’s a very useful job and, above all, safer” than working in Israel, Jamil said as he tended his plants with his sons, AFP reported.
Israel stopped issuing work permits to Palestinians after October 7.
According to the Gaza Strip Health Ministry, 39,790 people have died in the Israeli war so far.
According to the Palestinian Trade Union Federation, Jamil was one of 200,000 Palestinians from the West Bank who worked legally or illegally in Israel and lost their livelihoods overnight.
According to the World Bank, salaries in Israel are more than twice what Palestinians earn in the occupied territories.
Many of these workers are currently employed in the greenhouses that have sprung up in recent months on the hillsides where, Palestinian elders say, their ancestors once grew wheat.
In this way, “we are independent and peaceful,” says Jamil, adding: “It is much better than working in Israel. Here we work on our land.”
The economic outlook has worsened since the war, with unemployment in the West Bank rising from 12.9 percent to 32 percent in the last three months of 2023.
About 144,000 jobs were lost in the area, many due to increasing violence that prompted the military to close roads, bringing economic activity to a halt.
At least 617 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli army or settlers since October 7, according to an AFP count based on official Palestinian data.
According to official Israeli figures, at least 18 Israelis, including soldiers, were killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period.
According to estimates by the International Labour Organization (ILO), around $22 million in income is lost every day in the West Bank.
In Bayt Dayan alone, 300-350 men worked in Israel out of a population of 5,000.
Mazen Abu Jaish, 43, who worked in Israel for 10 years, took his time before deciding to pick up a shovel and rake and set up a tomato greenhouse.
“We waited and thought that we would get our jobs back after the war,” he told AFP.
But unlike previous wars in the Gaza Strip, which never lasted more than a few weeks, the current conflict is rapidly approaching its first anniversary.
“So we joined forces with 35 other people from the village and decided to start farming instead of waiting any longer,” says Jaish.
Since October 7, 15 hectares of Bayt Dajan have been covered with greenhouses full of tomatoes and cucumbers grown by people who used to work in Israel, community officials say.
Mohammad Ridwan, a member of the city council, sees further advantages: The greenhouses are located in Area C, the area in the West Bank that is exclusively controlled by Israel and is at risk of being used for illegal Israeli settlements.
Area C covers 59 percent of the West Bank and 63 percent of its agricultural land.
The Norwegian Refugee Council also states that Israel has denied Palestinians access to 99 percent of the land in Area C and in many cases prevented them from cultivating their own fields there.
“The local unemployed have found jobs and, most importantly, we are getting land in Area C,” said Ridwan.
