30-01-2017

“The lawyers of nonprofits Kav La’Oved and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel sent an urgent letter to Moshe Gafni (prior to a second discussion that was due to take place earlier this month but was subsequently postponed), they detailed their key objections to the change: Raising taxation would violate the principle the government established back in 1970 – maintaining equal pay for Palestinian and Israeli workers; the Israeli treasury would be making money on the backs of the weakest sector of workers, who already suffer numerous infringements to their rights; the use of the money to improve checkpoints was a cynical shirking of the government’s responsibility to improve their dreadful state; the gap in wages between the Palestinian labor market and the Israeli one derives from the application of Israeli labor laws, which should not be transgressed.”

Read Amira Hass’s full Haaretz article, “The Unlikely Defenders Of Palestinian Labor in Israel’s Knesset”