shoshana kordova

By Shoshana Kordova

GAZA - Surav Lama, 25, moved here from Nepal two years ago so he could send home the money he would earn as a hothouse worker. In that time, four foreign workers have been killed in Palestinian attacks on Gaza settlements; since the intifada began in 2000, more than 5,000 mortar shells and rockets have hit the Strip.

Many Israelis are aware of the Gaza fields and hothouses that grow most of the organic vegetables exported by Israel and bought by Orthodox Jews domestically. But the workers who make these gardens grow, like Lama, have been largely absent from public debate on the disengagement plan.

As Israeli settlers intensify their protests against the government plan to evacuate all 21 Gaza settlements and four in the northern West Bank, Lama is one of several foreign workers looking forward to leaving the Gaza settlement bloc of Gush Katif.

“It’s scary, it’s dangerous,” Lama says. “Everybody wants to go out [of Gaza].” Lama works in Ganei Tal, a Gush Katif settlement whose grassy playgrounds and red-roofed private homes are a world apart from the cramped apartment buildings most Israelis are used to. A short distance away from the homes lie row upon sandy row of the long gray hothouses where a Chinese laborer was killed by a Qassam rocket in June and a Thai worker was killed in a December mortar attack.

But although Lama worries about the danger of staying in Gush Katif, by working there he manages to send between 2,200-3,100 shekels (USD $500-$700) home to his family every month on his hourly salary of 12 shekels (USD $2.64) for a 10- to 12-hour day. By contrast, the minimum monthly wage in Nepal, including food allowances, ranges between 122-131 shekels (USD $27-$29), with salaries in agriculture often up to 50% lower, according to a 2002 U.S. State Department report.

Although the average salary that foreign workers receive in Israel may be significantly higher than what they would receive in their home countries, they are still making only 55% of the average Israeli’s wages, according to a 2004 annual report by Kav La’oved, a national workers rights group.

Lama is one of 600-650 legal foreign workers in Gush Katif, according to estimates by Israel’s Industry and Trade Ministry. But data supplied by Thai and Nepalese officials in Israel indicate that the Ministry’s numbers may include illegal residents. The Thai Embassy says that about half the approximately 200 Thai workers in Gush Katif are illegal workers, while the Nepalese Honorary Consulate estimates that 400-430 Nepalese are working there in addition to a small number of Chinese.

As many as 2,700 Palestinians also work in Gush Katif, says Yossi Tzarfati, chairman of the settlement bloc’s agricultural committee.

Although the Gaza Strip has its dangers, it has offered illegal foreign workers a distinct advantage over laborers within the Green Line: exemption from Israel’s deportation laws. Between September 2002, when Israel tightened its illegal resident laws, and May 2005, 136,690 foreign workers have left the country, according to the Immigration Administration. But since the Israeli police force does not have the authority to operate in the Gaza Strip, illegal workers living there have not had to worry about being caught.

That will change with the disengagement plan slated for mid-August, when trade ministry and immigration officials try to find housing for the workers and locate new jobs for them in Israel if they cannot continue working for their current employer. That involvement is good news for legal workers, but not for those who are here without valid permits.

“No workers from Gush Katif who are here legally will lose the right to work in Israel because of the pullout,” says Shoshana Strauss, who works in the trade ministry’s legal department. “If the worker entered Israel illegally or has been here more than the maximum period of five years, then they will probably be asked to leave.”

Hundreds of Thai workers have already left Gaza, and the Thai embassy is advising those remaining “to leave Gush Katif as soon as possible.” Thailand’s Labor Ministry called for the evacuation of all Thai workers from Gaza after a Thai citizen was killed in a mortar attack at a Gaza hothouse in June 2004. In October another Thai worker was killed in the same area, and a short time later the Thai Embassy assisted about 200 Thai workers in leaving Gaza, exerting what Gush Katif farmers say was undue pressure. The labor gap was subsequently filled by workers from Nepal.

“They left because the security situation was getting more serious,” says a Thai Embassy representative who would not be quoted by name. “I think part of it [is] they were scared.”

One of the Thai laborers who refused to leave was Jitladda Tap-arsa, who worked at geranium hothouses in Ganei Tal in the winter of 2004.

“She would always say to me … ‘The embassy wants to take us out of here and [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon wants to take you out of here. Both of us will stay here,’” recalls her boss, 56-year-old farm owner Shlomo Wasserteil. Jitladda, 19, was killed in a mortar attack at the hothouses in December.

“When she was killed there was horrific crying,” says Wasserteil, who keeps a picture of a smiling Jitladda and her husband tacked to a bulletin board in his office. Along another wall, Wasserteil has nailed five Qassam rockets and the mortar shell that killed Jitladda, all of which landed on his property.

After her death, eight of the laborers who had worked with her left Gush Katif. Only one foreign worker remained.

Like the farmers they work for, many of the agricultural workers don’t know what will happen to them after the disengagement. Many of the farmers are planting for next year despite the pullout plan. Uncertainty is rampant, regarding not just the details of the disengagement but also whether it will be implemented at all - an eventuality that 46 percent of Israeli settlers don’t believe will take place, according to a June study by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Amnon Ditur, 58, grows chives in Gush Katif hothouses spanning about 2.02 hectares (5 acres). He doesn’t have an alternate plot of farmland outside Gaza, where he has lived for 27 years, and isn’t sure whether he wants to begin all over again. As for his workers, “They have a lot of questions,” Ditur says. “They ask what will be and so on. I say I don’t know. If I stay here, they’ll stay. If I don’t stay - I don’t know.”

Two days after describing his concerns over what will happen to his livelihood, two of Ditur’s eight Palestinian workers and one of his two Chinese laborers were killed when a Qassam rocket hit his hothouses.

The latest attack has left workers nervous about their safety. Taking a pause in planting geranium cuttings in the Gaza sand that Wasserteil says makes the flowers grow so well, Gianga Kumari Sapkata, 35, says she enjoys working in Gush Katif. But like Surav Lama, she would prefer not to have to contend with Gaza’s security situation, or what she calls the “bomb problem.”

Sapkata, who moved here from Nepal seven months ago, says she would be “happy” to leave Gaza, in the hope that she would no longer be in danger of becoming a terror victim. She may be nurturing something of an illusion on that score, however: According to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, more than 570 people have been killed in attacks targeting civilians within the Green Line since 2000.

Sapkata sends much of the 139 shekels (USD $30.62) she earns per day to her husband and two children - a 14-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son - in Nepal, where she hopes they will have a better future.

But it is Sapkata’s future, like that of other foreign workers in the Gaza Strip and like that of the farmers who employ them, that for the time being is mired in the violence that has afflicted area settlements - as well as in the uncertainty of the impending disengagement.