Dialogue and Foreign Labor

A blog post by Adam. Our last Shabbat in Israel was spent with Roni and Ovadia Keidar, who live on a moshav on the border of Gaza. We met Roni when she visited Seattle as a guest of the Jewish Federation, just before our trip began. When we told her we would be visiting Israel she invited us to come and stay with her. How could we refuse the offer?

Roni is originally from England, though she made aliyah to Israel as a child and Ovadia was born in Egypt - a Jew whose first language is Arabic. Ovadia is a farmer who specializes in desert farming (more about this later). In the 70s they helped establish a moshav (farming village) in the Sinai Peninsula.  When the Peninsula was traded for peace with Egypt, they decided to re-establish their moshav within Israel's internationally recognized borders, but as close to the border as possible. The moshav is therefore located directly on the Gaza border. And on the border it is. The edge of the moshav is primarily a fence between Gaza and Israel, except near the residential area where the Israeli government has constructed a high wall for protection from snipers.

Given their proximity to Gaza, Roni and Ovadia have experienced their share of missiles. Two people have died on the moshav - a young woman and a Thai farmworker who was working in the moshav's fields. During the last missile barrage in November, Roni and Ovadia had the option to leave but Ovadia refused because he wasn't willing to abandon the Thai workers who work his fields and had nowhere else to go.

Due to the endless violence, Roni is committed to working for peace. She said that there is no other option. The violence is clearly not working for either side. For several years she has participated in Other Voice (http://www.othervoice.org/welcome-eng.htm), an organization that promotes dialogue between people in Gaza and the surrounding Israeli communities. This is exactly what I had hoped for when meeting with Nasser in Bethlehem. Real dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. How incredible that this was happening on the Gaza border, where tensions appear to be so much higher than between Israel and the West Bank.

Over the years, Other Voice has hosted several exchanges in Israel (neither Hamas nor Israel will allow Israelis into Gaza), although unfortunately these exchanges come with risks.  At their last retreat two years ago, one of the Palestinian participants openly shared his views (and his identity) with the Israeli media. Hamas detained him after returning to Gaza and he had to escape for his life to Egypt. He is now living in Morocco. A harsh punishment for discussing peace with Israelis. Since this time, Other Voice has suspended in-person meetings and now they meet via phone. Roni said her encounters with Palestinians give her hope, while she feels sick every time the bombing commences between Israel and Gaza. She is afraid, but at least she has a bomb shelter. Her friends in Gaza don't even have the security of bomb shelters.

Roni shared these stories and thoughts as we toured the moshav, viewing the security walls and fences. We stopped at a mural created by a moshav resident on one of the walls that says "path to peace." For the first time in many days we felt genuine hope.

We then toured Ovadia's greenhouses. Like many desert farmers, Ovadia grows his crops in sand, with an advanced drip irrigation system that provides the plants the perfect combination of water and nutrients directly into their roots. Ovadia can change the quantities of water and nutrients throughout the growing cycle depending on the plants' needs.

Ovadia shows Melissa part of pepper growing in the sandy Israeli soil.

Ovadia produces pepper, tomato amd melon seeds, a tedious a labor intensive process. Each flower must be hand pollinated to ensure the highest quality of seed production. This process requires that a worker first sterilize each flower and then return to pollinate each flower by hand. Workers tag the flowers as they complete this process and any flower that is discovered without a tag is discarded. Workers work all day and into the night for weeks on end to complete the process.

Thai workers sterilizing tomato flowers.
The colored tags hanging from the plant show each flower that has already been sterilized.

The farmworkers are almost all from Thailand.  The Israeli government allows a very limited number of foreign workers into the country, and each farmer must apply for a specific number of work permits. Ovadia has been granted 5 foreign work permits, and he lamented that if only he had more permits, he could produce more seeds.  In the past, there was never a need for foreign labor because many people came from Gaza to work in Israeli fields. Those days disappeared years ago.

Back at Roni and Ovadia's house, we recounted what we had seen and the conversation slowly transitioned to Roni's aging aunt and uncle who needed help at home. Roni was in the process of helping them find in-home help - a "Filipina". Similar to Ovadia's story of hiring Thai workers, Roni explained how Israelis could apply for a work permit for a "Filipina" to serve as a live-in home care aid. It was a lengthy process that included a medical evaluation of the older adult and negotiations with a placement agency. In the Philippines workers paid thousands of dollars to qualify for a permit that would tie them to a specific Israeli older adult.  If that older adult died or fired them, they either had to leave the country or become an undocumented worker. As we had seen at Ein Gedi weeks earlier, the need for non-Jewish foreign labor in Israel created complicated bureaucracies that only partially met Israel's needs. Again, how different things might be if a different relationship existed between Israel and Palestine, a relationship where people could work together and where discussions of peace didn't result in exile.