Desperate Palestinian Workers Sneak Into Israel

by Ben Lynfield

Every week, Abu Layl, 19, would sneak into Israel, not to mount an attack, but in the hopes of finding some odd jobs so that he could bring money back to his ten brothers and two sisters over the weekend. With his father not healthy enough to work, the burden of supporting the family had fallen on him and his brother Mohammed, 22.

"We were afraid, but we needed the money to live," said Mohammed. Last Saturday night, Abu Layl began the six-hour night-time journey through back roads of the West Bank that normally landed him in the Tel Aviv area in time to look for work. Three other cars full of workers just as desperate as he were in the convoy that came up against a barricade of stones near Silat a-Zahir village in the West Bank at 1:30AM.

As witnesses tell it, several people got out to remove the stones, and soldiers nearby opened fire with automatic weapons. Abu Layl, sitting inside one of the taxis, was hit in the chest, arm and neck. Another worker, a gardener named Khalil Sarafandi, 50, was also killed and 10 other Palestinians were injured.

Army officials said that the incident is being investigated. Earlier, they said that Palestinians had been shooting at a nearby Jewish settlement that night, and that surprise checkpoints had been set up along the roadways.

All previous probes, during a year replete with avoidable deaths of Palestinian civilians, have failed to produce meaningful disciplinary action against soldiers for misuse of weapons.

Abu Layl's secret life as an illegal worker in Israel, as related by his brother, is nearly as disturbing as his death: a tale of constant fear and exploitation, of sleeping under trees. But it is a daily reality for about 1,000 Palestinians.

A cousin of Abu Layl's said he was "very clever. He had a good mind." Coming from a poor refugee background, however, he never had a chance to pursue a higher education. In eighth grade, he was forced to quit school and work with Mohammed as a painter.

Their small house has no television or radio, and the room where Abu Layl and eight people slept on thin mattresses is missing windowpanes.

The rooms' only decoration, besides a landscape picture that looks like it was cut from a magazine, is a poster listing the 99 names of God in Islam. The first name it lists is Al-Rahman, the merciful. Now, a picture of Abu Layl has been placed on the same wall.

Three years ago, Mohammed and Abu Layl started going to Israel to find work. Even after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising a year ago, when traffic on paved roads was curbed by the army and Israeli troops were allowed by their officers to shoot with much greater freedom, the two continued to make the trip. Most illegal workers opted out of the journey at that point.

"People like Hosni Abu Layl are the ones left with no choices. They're willing to risk it because they have nothing to lose," said Lucy Renee of the Democracy and Workers' Rights Center in Ramallah.

When they arrived in the Tel Aviv area, Mohammed and Abu Layl would stand at an intersection known as Pardes Katz and try to interest Israelis in taking them on for the day.

On a good day, they would make about $20 each, but they would sometimes work for much less, Mohammed said. Sometimes there was no work at all. Fearing arrest, the two would lie when asked where they came from, and say that they were from Arab areas of Israel rather than the West Bank.

The jobs included moving, construction and digging, Mohammed said. "All of it was dangerous," he said, rolling up his trousers to show scars from an accident he had while sawing trees. He said that sometimes he and his brother would work, and then the person who hired them would simply refuse to pay. There was nothing they could do about it, he said.

"We were always afraid, we were always hiding," Mohammed said. They would sleep in secluded places "under trees," he said.

Every weekend, the two would make their way home to the crumbling grey house in the grey alley here, close to where the Israeli army used a car bomb to assassinate a fighter from Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, Izham Mazzar, this summer.

They would walk past the posters of other local leaders assassinated by Israel, including Jamal Salim and Jamal Mansour, who were founding fathers of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas.

Then Mohammed and Abu Layl would distribute the cash they had made to their family. Much of it would go for medical treatment for their older brother Mayoub, who has been unable to work for three years.

But all that is over now, said Mohammed. There will be no more trips to Israel, of that he is sure. What will they do now? "Only God knows," said Abu Layl's brother Samir.