Let's get away for a moment from the familiar routine, and imagine a boycott that is announced by religious citizens on a food chain, say because some of its brunches are open on Saturday. It is reasonable to presume that the owners would soon be convinced to compromise with those who boycott the chain, maybe to the detriment of its secular customers, in order to minimize damage. Would they think to ask for compensations from the tax payer? Probably not. They know that a consumer boycott is an affective tool in struggles for social change or against corporations that harm humans, animals or the environment. That is the way of civil action.

However, when a boycott directed at businesses is politically motivated, or a protest has a national background, Israeli rhetoric turns it from a legitimate tool to a dangerous weapon, and goes as far as framing it as a terrorist attack that would justify asking the State for compensation. Indeed, it was recently published that the Ministry of Industry, Trade and labor is examining a request by the Manufacturers Association in Israel to compensate factories that would be harmed by the Palestinian boycott on settlements' products.

It is important to mention that the tax payer has already paid and keeps paying his share to the business owners who chose to set up their factories in settlements and in industrial zones along the 1967 borders. Taxpayers’ money finances the benefits that they get for belonging to “national priority zones”, where the Investment Center in the Ministry of Industry, Trade and labor provides such factories with financial grants, low property tax, tight security services, attractive land prices, and an "available workforce" (as stated, among others, in the website of the the Ma'ale Adumim Economic Development Company).

This “available workforce” is 20,000 Palestinian workers with work permits and about 10,000 workers employed without permits. Employment permits and checkpoint passes are used by security authorities as a means of control over workers, and are exploited by the employers in order to silence complaints.

The common complaints of workers deal with violations of the minimum wage law, lack of pay slips, arbitrary dismissals without severance pay, and severe violations of safety regulations that put workers’ health and lives at risk. Work related accidents are reported only in exceptional circumstance to the National Insurance Institute, and usually the workers are left alone to deal with the results of such accidents and their financial consequences.

The common form of employment is by subcontractors, who release the employers from their responsibility to their employees. Despite the decision of the High Court of Justice that the Israeli law applies to Palestinians employed by Israelis in the West Bank, the equality at workplace principal is not implemented in the settlements. Agriculture workers earn 50-60 shekels for a workday of 8 hours, and industry workers earn 80-120 shekels for a workday.

The Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor, Binyamin Ben Eliezer, argued his demand from the Palestinian authority to revoke the boycott by claiming that many factories in the settlements employ Palestinian workers. It is doubtful whether the Minister is aware of the systematic exploitation of Palestinian workers and takes measures to enforce labor laws on their employers. It is a shame that he remembers the workers only when it seems that the financial interests of Israel are about to get hurt.

Translated by: Tal Croitoru