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Exploitation of Palestinian Labour in Contemporary Zionist Colonialism

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Summary

Shir Hever argues that the Israeli government’s ‘Separation’ policies of the 1990s appeared to make a historic choice of segregation over exploitation of Palestinian labour, but that exploitation did not end: it declined, was displaced onto Labour Immigrants, and changed form (Exploitation of Palestinian Labour in Contemporary Zionist Colonialism, PDF p.1-4 / printed p.124-127). Before the First Intifada, 32% of the West Bank workforce and 57% of the Gaza workforce worked for Israeli employers; at the time of writing the figures are 0% from Gaza and 12.6% from the West Bank, 81,000 Palestinian workers in all against 202,000 labour immigrants, and international aid has replaced work for Israeli employers as the Palestinian economy’s largest income source, while Israel remains sovereign and shirks economic responsibility (PDF p.3-4). Inside Israel, Palestinian citizens remain simultaneously included — in low-status, low-wage work — and excluded, into a segregated Niche Market, under the unresolved tension between a tiered economy using Palestinian labour and a ‘pure’ Jewish sphere demanded by Hebrew Labor (PDF p.4-5). Colony old industries still exploit Palestinian workers through Palestinian contractors and subsidised industrial zones; the post-1967 Slave Markets have been dismantled by closures and permits, but a new exploitation is emerging in which Palestinians become ‘guinea pigs’ for a Homeland Security Industry whose product is Warehousing experience and technology (PDF p.5-7). Because exploitation and dispossession together funded the state and then seeped inwards, producing the gaps behind the summer 2011 protests, Hever closes by proposing a Politics of Inclusion — grassroots, non-violent resistance recruiting dissatisfied Israelis and reconnecting with Palestinian citizens of Israel — over a state-building path based on internal exploitation and strong local elites (PDF p.7-8).

What the file is

  • The file is Shir Hever’s article in settler colonial studies 2, 1 (2012), the special issue Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine, ISSN 1838-0743; printed pages 124-132, PDF p.1 carrying printed p.124 and PDF p.9 carrying printed p.132, so printed page = PDF page + 123 throughout. The running head on PDF p.2-9 is Hever, ‘Exploitation of Palestinian Labour’.
  • The byline is SHIR HEVER, Alternative Information Center, Jerusalem (PDF p.1). The Biographical Note (PDF p.8 / printed p.131) adds that Hever is a researcher at the Alternative Information Center and author of Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation (Pluto Press, 2010).
  • The author’s own prefatory note (PDF p.1) states the essay’s status expressly: it is based on a paper presented at the ‘Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine’ conference at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London on 5 March 2011, “contains preliminary ideas for a future research, and does not represent a complete study”, contains ideas that need further development, and rests in part on interviews, personal experience and off-the-record comments by officials who preferred not to be quoted by name; a future study will include more comprehensive referencing.
  • Structure: an untitled introduction (PDF p.1-2); the headed sections ‘Is Exploitation Really Over?’ (PDF p.2-4), ‘Palestinian Citizens of Israel’ (PDF p.4-5), ‘The Old Industries’ (PDF p.5), ‘From the ‘Slave Market’ to the Laboratory?’ (PDF p.6-7), and ‘From Social Gaps to Politics of Inclusion’ (PDF p.7-8); then the Biographical Note and notes 1-10 (PDF p.8-9). There is no separate abstract or conclusion section; the argument closes at the end of ‘From Social Gaps to Politics of Inclusion’.
  • Access basis: open-license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0), downloaded from the publisher’s figshare file given in url.
  • The text copy is clean and complete, with === PDF p.N === markers for all 9 pages; quotations were checked against it. One passage (PDF p.7) is broken across columns in the text copy and is reassembled in printed reading order in the reading notes. Printed variants are kept as printed and recorded under Open questions.

Section by section

Introduction: separation over exploitation (PDF p.1-2 / printed p.124-125)

The imperial powers of the 18th to 20th centuries built a colonial model on exploiting local resources and cheap labor in the colonies, essential to the global economic systems prevailing until the end of the Second World War and since replaced by a different array of relations with former colonies; Israeli colonialism in Palestine is the noted exception, a colonial movement that continued to expand while other colonial regimes were in remission. When the Israeli government adopted the ‘Separation’ policies in the 1990s, it seemed to favour segregation over exploitation; the Zionist movement had contained an internal struggle between proponents of segregation and ‘demographic victory’ and proponents of expansionism and exploitation, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin clearly favoured the former camp. Allowing the Palestinian Authority to take over management of the Palestinian population was not merely an Oslo concession but part of a plan to minimise friction with the military and to lay foundations for a segregation system minimising contact. Blanket closures, and subsequently the Separation wall and the siege of the Gaza Strip, preventing Palestinian workers from reaching Israeli employers, were the main manifestation, integral to the same policy that allowed the Palestinian Authority’s establishment. The Israeli business sector, especially construction and agriculture, accustomed to a disempowered and underpaid workforce, took an active role in drawing the first stage of the Oslo negotiations (‘Oslo A’); when the government began severing its ties to the Palestinian workforce (‘Oslo B’), business lobbied and was appeased with permits to import large numbers of Labour Immigrants to replace the Palestinian workers. Arie Arnon, Shlomo Swirski and Neve Gordon are cited for the argument that as Israel moves away from an exploitation-based policy the occupation becomes less profitable and eventually a burden (note 1); instead ethnic domination and ‘purity’ play an increasing role. The section’s questions: how does the Palestinian working class fit into the new system promoting Separation over exploitation, and is that system sustainable?

Is Exploitation Really Over? (PDF p.2-4 / printed p.125-127)

Not too hastily concluded: Kav Laoved’s regular reports show Palestinian and migrant workers overworked for long hours, denied basic rights and put in extreme physical danger, and show that West Bank colony employers have perfected mechanisms to distance themselves from workers and responsibility — Jewish colonists employ local Palestinian contractors who bring the workers, avoiding responsibility for their rights and the need to report actual numbers employed; such disavowal was deemed illegal by the Israeli courts but is still in practice. The figures (note 2): before the first Intifada, 32% of the West Bank workforce and 57% of the Gaza workforce were employed by Israeli employers and work in Israel was the Palestinian economy’s biggest income source; currently 0% of Gaza’s workforce and 12.6% of the West Bank workforce (3.2% in the colonies), 8.5% of the total Palestinian workforce (2.2% in the colonies), are so employed, all colony data being rough estimates. About 53,000 Palestinian workers enter Israel (about half without permits) and about 28,000 work in the colonies — 81,000 in total, none from Gaza — against 202,000 labour immigrants estimated in the Israeli economy, most without permits. The Gaza Strip is presented as the model of extreme separation Israeli officials are considering for the West Bank: evacuating the Gaza colonies bought total separation. Work for Israeli employers is no longer the biggest income source; international aid, mostly humanitarian food and emergency services, now is. Israel remains sovereign in the Occupied Territory but shirks responsibility for the population’s economic needs, which the international community shoulders on its behalf. Labour exploitation still exists but has declined since the early 1990s, is no longer the occupation economy’s major aspect, and was overtaken by security and military logic, ‘ethnic purity’ considerations and colonial politics.

Palestinian Citizens of Israel (PDF p.4-5 / printed p.127-128)

The dual nature of the Israeli economy vis-à-vis the Palestinians — a mix of exploitation and dispossession (mainly of land) — did not start with the 1967 occupation but was entrenched in Palestinian citizens’ simultaneous inclusion in and exclusion from the mainstream market even before 1948. Inclusion: many are employed in low-status, low-wage jobs, especially services, agriculture and construction — testimony to colonial methods embedded in the economy and exploitation practices still used against non-Jews. Exclusion: Amtanes Shehadeh’s study (note 3) showed decades of internal segregation pushed them into forming a ‘niche market’ with its own small agricultural, commercial and service sectors and a very small industrial sector, serving mainly the Palestinian community. ‘Hebrew Labor’ was developed by the early Jewish colonists at the beginning of the 20th century as a call to employ only Jews and buy only from Jews, adopted by the mainstream of the colonist community to entrench Jewish self-sufficiency and hegemony. The internal Zionist tension — a tiered society seeking Palestinian labour to increase Jewish business profit, against a ‘pure’ Jewish economic sphere whose working class is also predominantly Jewish — is far from resolved. Recent years saw a parallel increase in senior policymakers’ statements about the need to ‘close gaps’ and bring Palestinian citizens into all sectors (intended mostly for international ears) and in the ‘Hebrew Labor’ movement, with attempts to intimidate employers who employ Palestinians (note 4); both sets of statements are aimed at marginalising Palestinians and are direct results of international criticism of Israel’s ethnic policies.

The Old Industries (PDF p.5 / printed p.128)

Swirski noted colony industries tend to be slightly lower-tech and more labour-intensive than Israeli industries, with some notable exceptions (note 5). Though the government boasts of world technology leadership, large sections of the economy are still traditional: packaging, plastics, furniture and food processing compete with cheap East-Asian imports by building factories and warehouses in colony industrial zones, where they receive substantial government subsidies, pay lower taxes, and have access to the exploitable Palestinian workforce. The Palestinian Authority’s 2010 decision to organise a boycott of colony products highlighted this industry’s role. Shraga Brosh, chairman of the Manufacturers Association of Israel, Israel’s strongest employers’ lobby, himself owns a factory in the colonies and used the chairmanship to lobby the government to protect colony businesses and to pressure the Palestinian Authority to refrain from boycotting colony products or preventing Palestinians from working in them. In the absence of statistics on colony production and activity — the government uses different tools to obfuscate the distinction between colony and Israeli industries — the colony industries’ actual importance remains unclear.

From the ‘Slave Market’ to the Laboratory? (PDF p.6-7 / printed p.129-130)

After 1967, gathering places, especially in the big cities, became ‘slave markets’: Palestinian workers congregated in the early morning and Israeli contractors drove by and collected workers for the day (note 6). Those picked — judged young, fit and hard-working — were paid for a single day, with no guarantee of another day and no social benefits; those not picked returned home empty-handed after wasting half a day. Since the first Intifada the markets have been mostly dismantled by closures and a restrictive permit policy; Israelis can no longer pick up a worker at will, Palestinian workers have no safe place to gather, and that form of exploitation has been nearly, though not entirely, eliminated. A new form may be emerging, transforming Palestinians from exploited workers to exploited ‘guinea pigs’: Naomi Klein’s 2007 ‘Laboratory for a Fortress World’ and The Shock Doctrine propose that Israel is turning the Palestinian Territories, especially Gaza, into laboratories for new Israeli-made weapons and control mechanisms (notes 7-8). The homeland security sector emerged to create technology for the government and army to control the occupied population and repress its resistance; companies such as Elbit, Magal and Nice sought markets beyond the Ministry of Defense and came to rely on equipment being tested on Palestinians to promote sales — companies and practices described by Gordon (note 9). The new product is not physical but an accumulation of experience and technology for what Jeff Halper calls ‘warehousing’, mass-scale imprisonment and containment of impoverished people in controlled environments from which they cannot launch effective resistance, a product sought by many governments and corporations especially after 9/11. The limit is stated: the military and homeland security industry accounts for merely 10-15% of Israel’s exports, 3-4% of GDP and 1-3% of its workforce, so the Israeli economy cannot be said to be primarily based on exploiting the Palestinian population (note 10).

From Social Gaps to Politics of Inclusion (PDF p.7-8 / printed p.130-131)

Exploitation and dispossession share one element: both redistribute wealth from one group to another — exploitation appropriates value as it is produced, dispossession appropriates previously produced value or natural resources. Together they helped fund Israel’s military buildup and entrench the Zionist project, but the practices seeped inwards, creating vast gaps inside Israeli society and a growing group of impoverished Jews whose economic lot is no better than that of middle-class West Bank Palestinians. The mass protest movement of summer 2011 — the 2011 Israeli Social Protests — demonstrates both middle-class impoverishment and unbearable inequalities, and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles facing a social justice movement growing out of an ethnically unjust society; the establishment repressed it by hinting the protestors were not patriotic enough, that ‘social justice’ might undermine Jewish superiority, and that security needs come before economic needs. These contradictions are common features of classical colonialist powers: inequality, corruption and internal conflict flourish in societies accumulating wealth at the expense of occupied nations. Palestinian resistance could take the traditional state-building route — military struggle or diplomacy, a partially independent economy based on internal exploitation and strong local elites — but that path is unlikely to redress decades of accumulated economic injustice. The alternative is a politics of inclusion: grassroots protest, international solidarity and non-violent action, resisted by Palestinian elites but able to recruit dissatisfied groups within Israeli society, reconnect with Palestinian citizens of Israel, and begin redressing political and economic injustice alike.

Biographical Note and Notes (PDF p.8-9 / printed p.131-132)

The Biographical Note is summarised under What the file is. The 10 notes supply the apparatus: note 1 (Arnon 2007; Swirski 2008; Gordon 2008), note 2 (Bank of Israel Report 2010, chapter 5; PNA and PCBS Labour Force Survey Q1/2011; Dolev Rahat, ‘2010 Increase in Palestinian Workers in the Settlements’, alternativenews.org, accessed 28/04/11), note 3 (Shehadeh, Blocking the Development, Mada al-Carmel, 2006), note 4 (‘Hebrew Labour’ websites and right-wing activists mapping employers of Palestinians), note 5 (Swirski), note 6 (George T. Abed, The Palestinian Economy, Routledge, 1988), notes 7-8 (Klein, The Nation, 02/07/07, and The Shock Doctrine, 2007), note 9 (Gordon, ‘The Political Economy of Israel’s Homeland Security/Surveillance Industry’, accessed 02/01/12) and note 10 (Yossi Ackerman, Yaffe Center for Strategic Studies Memo 62, October 2002, pp. 127-31).

Key passages

  • “a colonial movement which continued to expand while other colonial regimes were in remission” (PDF p.1 / printed p.124)
  • “So how does the Palestinian working class fit into the new economic system, which promotes separation over exploitation? Is it a system which Israel can sustain?” (PDF p.2 / printed p.125)
  • “One should not be too hasty to conclude that Israeli employers stopped exploiting Palestinian workers.” (PDF p.2 / printed p.125)
  • “Such disavowal of responsibility was deemed illegal by the Israeli courts but is nevertheless still in practice.” (PDF p.3 / printed p.126)
  • “The Gaza Strip seems to be the model of extreme separation which Israeli officials are considering for the West Bank as well” (PDF p.3 / printed p.126)
  • “The dual nature of the Israeli economy vis-à-vis the Palestinians – a mix of exploitation and dispossession (mainly of land) – did not start with the 1967 occupation” (PDF p.4 / printed p.127)
  • “the actual importance of the colony industries remains unclear” (PDF p.5 / printed p.128)
  • “These areas were nicknamed by Israelis as the ‘slave markets’” (PDF p.6 / printed p.129)
  • “The new product which Israel is producing on the backs of Palestinians is therefore not a physical product but rather an accumulation of experience and technology” (PDF p.7 / printed p.130)
  • “The common element to both exploitation and dispossession is that they both serve to redistribute wealth from one group to another.” (PDF p.7 / printed p.130)
  • “These contradictions are not unique to Israel, but are common features of classical colonialist powers.” (PDF p.8 / printed p.131)
  • “The alternative is to exploit the weakness which Zionist colonial practices brought upon Israeli society to seek a political path to inclusion.” (PDF p.8 / printed p.131)

Evidence the work relies on

  • The prefatory note (PDF p.1) states part of the basis directly: interviews, personal experience and off-the-record comments by officials not quoted by name, with fuller referencing promised for a future study. The essay is expressly preliminary and not a complete study.
  • Workers-rights monitoring: the regular reports of Kav Laoved, an Israeli workers-rights organisation monitoring mistreatment of Palestinian workers and migrant workers by Israeli employers, for continuing exploitation and for the Palestinian-contractor mechanism in the West Bank colonies (PDF p.2-3). No single Kav Laoved report is cited by title or date in the notes.
  • Labour statistics: Bank of Israel, ‘Chapter 5: The Labor Market’, Report 2010; Palestinian National Authority and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Labour Force Survey (January-March 2011), Round Q1/2011; and Dolev Rahat, ‘2010 Increase in Palestinian Workers in the Settlements’ (alternativenews.org, accessed 28/04/11), cited together in note 2 for the employment percentages, the 53,000 / 28,000 / 81,000 Palestinian figures and the 202,000 labour-immigrant estimate (PDF p.3).
  • The changing-economy literature: Arie Arnon, ‘Israeli Policy Towards the Occupied Palestinian Territories: The Economic Dimension, 1967-2007’, Middle East Journal 61, 4 (2007), pp. 573-595; Shlomo Swirski, The Cost of Occupation, 2008 Report (Adva Center, 2008), also cited at note 5 for colony industries’ lower-tech, labour-intensive character; and Neve Gordon, Israel’s Occupation (University of California Press, 2008) (note 1, PDF p.2, p.8).
  • Amtanes Shehadeh, Blocking the Development (Haifa: Mada al-Carmel, 2006), for the ‘niche market’ formed by Palestinian citizens of Israel (note 3, PDF p.4).
  • George T. Abed, The Palestinian Economy: Studies in Development Under Prolonged Occupation (Routledge, 1988), for the post-1967 ‘slave markets’ (note 6, PDF p.6).
  • Naomi Klein, ‘Laboratory for a Fortress World’, The Nation, 02/07/07, and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Metropolitan Books, 2007), for territories as laboratories (notes 7-8, PDF p.6); Neve Gordon, ‘The Political Economy of Israel’s Homeland Security/Surveillance Industry’ (Working Paper III, accessed 02/01/12), for Elbit, Magal and Nice and testing on Palestinians (note 9, PDF p.6-7); Jeff Halper, named in the text without a note, for ‘warehousing’ (PDF p.7).
  • Yossi Ackerman, ‘Policy in Light of the Industry in Private-Public Ownership’, Yaffe Center for Strategic Studies, Memo 62, October 2002, pp. 127-31, for the homeland security industry’s share of exports, GDP and workforce (note 10, PDF p.7).

Analysis

The essay’s method is a short programmatic synthesis, declared as preliminary in its own prefatory note, rather than a documented study: a periodisation (exploitation dominant to the early 1990s; separation adopted in the 1990s; exploitation persisting in reduced and transformed forms) is carried by three kinds of material — the cited economic literature (Arnon, Swirski, Gordon) for the separation turn and the burden thesis, which Hever accepts but qualifies; official and survey statistics (Bank of Israel, PCBS, Rahat) for the employment collapse, given in one dense paragraph with the colony figures expressly flagged as rough estimates; and monitoring and journalism (Kav Laoved’s reports, unnamed in detail) for the claim that exploitation continues. Its perspective is declared in its terms: the West Bank settlements are ‘colonies’ and their residents ‘colonists’ throughout, the state project is ‘Zionist colonialism’, and the closing proposal is the author’s own political programme, not a finding. Its strongest internal support is the quantitative spine — the before/after employment shares are sourced, internally consistent (53,000 plus 28,000 equalling the stated 81,000, computed from the work’s figures), and set against the 202,000 labour-immigrant replacement figure — together with the stated limits it imposes on its own claims: the colony industries’ importance ‘remains unclear’ for lack of statistics, and the homeland security industry’s shares are given precisely to show the economy is not primarily based on exploiting Palestinians. Its limits are the ones the prefatory note announces: several central facts rest on interviews, personal experience and off-the-record officials; the contractor mechanism, the Brosh lobbying, the policymakers’ ‘close gaps’ statements and the 2011 protest reading carry no note at all; the homeland-security section is a chain of other authors’ proposals (Klein, Gordon, Halper) rather than evidence gathered here; and the two-paths conclusion is argued by assertion — the state-building path is said to be unlikely to redress injustice, and the inclusion path to be able to recruit Israeli dissatisfaction, without instances given for either in the essay.

People, organizations, places and events

Shir Hever, Yitzhak Rabin, Arie Arnon, Shlomo Swirski, Neve Gordon, Amtanes Shehadeh, Shraga Brosh, Naomi Klein, Jeff Halper, Kav Laoved, Alternative Information Center, Manufacturers Association of Israel, Elbit Systems, Magal, Nice, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, First Intifada, Oslo Accords, 2011 Israeli Social Protests, Gaza, West Bank, Gaza Siege

Concepts

Separation, Labour Immigrants, Closure system, Separation wall, Exploitation and Dispossession, Niche Market, Hebrew Labour, Conquest of Labour, Jewish Labour Only, Colony Industries, Slave Markets, Homeland Security Industry, Warehousing, Fortress Israel, Politics of Inclusion, Settler Colonialism

How it relates to other sources

Open questions

  • The work’s own prefatory note (PDF p.1) leaves its factual basis partly uncheckable from the file: some facts rest on interviews, personal experience and off-the-record officials, and several central claims — the Palestinian-contractor mechanism’s prevalence, Shraga Brosh’s lobbying, the ‘close gaps’ statements, the reading of the 2011 protests — carry no note. Which facts rest on which basis is not marked in the essay.
  • Spelling variants as printed: the work uses both ‘labor’ (in the opening colonial model, the Bank of Israel chapter title and Klein’s article title) and ‘labour’ (its own title and most of its prose); ‘Hebrew Labor’ in the text (PDF p.4-5) against ‘Hebrew Labour’ in note 4 (PDF p.9); the employers’ body is printed “Manufacturer’s Association of Israel” (PDF p.5), with the apostrophe after Manufacturer, kept as printed on its page; Gordon’s book is published at “Berkley, Los Angeles” in note 1 (PDF p.8), as printed.
  • “Amtanes Shehadeh” is the spelling printed in the text (PDF p.4) and in note 3 (PDF p.9) for the author of Blocking the Development (Mada al-Carmel, 2006); no other form of the name is given in the work, and the page is filed under the printed spelling.
  • The employment figures are given as “currently” and “at present” without an as-of date in the text (PDF p.3); the note 2 sources date them indirectly — Bank of Israel Report 2010 and the PCBS Labour Force Survey of January-March 2011 — and the work does not say which figure comes from which source. The percentages 12.6% (West Bank workforce employed by Israeli employers) and 3.2% (in the colonies), and 8.5% and 2.2% for the total workforce, are stated alongside the absolute 53,000 and 28,000, whose sum is the stated 81,000; the work does not reconcile the colony share of the absolute figures (28,000 of 81,000) with the colony percentages as printed, and all colony data are said to be rough estimates.
  • Jeff Halper’s ‘warehousing’ is named in the text (PDF p.7) with no work by Halper cited in the notes; the source of the term beyond Halper’s name is not given in the file.
  • The ‘slave markets’ are sourced to Abed (1988) at note 6 for the gathering places, but the nickname itself, and the contractors’ selection practice, carry no separate citation in the work.
  • Dolev Rahat’s article title in note 2 uses ‘Settlements’ for what the essay’s own prose calls the colonies; both terms are kept as printed in their places.

Coverage

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