Israel barrier no obstacle to Palestinians seeking work

AFP, Jerusalem

Every day they sneak into Israel by the dozens under the eyes of the soldiers at checkpoints -- a stream of Palestinian labourers from the occupied West Bank desperate for work.
"We are always looking for new methods -- if the Israelis crack down on refrigerated lorries we use ambulances, if they start stopping ambulances we use hearses," says Abu Ali, a smuggler who granted a rare interview to AFP on the condition his real name and the name of his village be kept quiet.
Sometimes it's a simple question of timing -- Abu Ali claims he once sneaked 97 workers across in the luggage compartment of a bus because it passed through a checkpoint at dusk, when the sun was in the soldiers' eyes.
The covert commute testifies to the economic despair in the occupied West Bank and calls into question Israel's claim that its controversial separation barrier keeps Palestinians from entering clandestinely.
The vehicles are driven by Israelis, either Jews or Arabs, who are part of smuggling rings that straddle the boundaries of the conflict and often include Jewish settlers, soldiers and bribed checkpoint officials, Abu Ali says.
He charges around 50 dollars per person, but says he pockets less than 10 of it, with the rest paying the other people involved in the ring.
The sheer number of workers using his services has allowed him to build a new three-storey house and made him one of the wealthier residents in his village.
Israeli police have arrested more than 16,000 undocumented Palestinian workers since the start of the year, releasing the vast majority after a few hours, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
"Our units respond immediately, number one because of the possibility of terror infiltration. But in a majority of cases the suspects claim they are coming in for work purposes," he says. Abu Ali insists he would never help an aspiring suicide bomber to enter for fear of being caught by Israeli security forces. "The Israelis catch them before they ever leave the West Bank 95 percent of the time," he says.
The labourers who sneak in can make up to 50 dollars a day at construction sites and factories in Israel, up to four or five times what they would make in the West Bank, where work is scarce.
"The economic situation is so desperate in the Palestinian territories that people are willing to endure all kinds of hardships to enter," says Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
Long dependent on employment inside Israel and its settlements, the Palestinian economy was sent into a tailspin with the restrictions on movement of goods and people Israel imposed on the West Bank after the second Intifada, which erupted in September 2000.