Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits

Special Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
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A family fleeing Lebanon's economic crisis arrives at Cyprus' Larnaca International Airport in this Sept. 2, 2021 photo. (AFP file)
Special Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
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A general strike by public transport and workers unions early this year over Lebanon's economic crisis has emptied roads in Beirut and elsewhere. (AFP)
Special Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
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The increasing difficulties faces by families in Lebanon has forced many to seek better life abroad. (AFP)
Special Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
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The increasing difficulties faces by families in Lebanon has forced many to seek better life abroad. (AFP)
Special Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
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The increasing difficulties faces by families in Lebanon has forced many to seek better life abroad. (AFP)
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Updated 12 June 2022

Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits

Lebanon’s middle class thins out as skilled professionals head for the exits
  • Economists say phenomenon of educated people moving abroad en masse will make recovery much harder
  • Since 2019, Lebanon has been beset with an economic crisis, COVID-19 pandemic and political paralysis

DUBAI: When Lebanese cardiologist Walid Alami, 59, was 19 years old he worked as a volunteer in an emergency operating room and helped dozens of people who were wounded during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

After a massive explosion tore through Beirut’s port on Aug. 4, 2020, he once again found himself in the thick of life-saving emergency action.

However, as has been the case for thousands of middle-class Lebanese professionals, the nation’s prolonged, overlapping crises eventually proved too much to endure, forcing him and his family to move abroad in search of safety and economic security.

Alami gave up a lucrative cardiology practice in the US and returned to Beirut in 2012 so that he could be closer to his extended family and his children could experience the nation of their roots.




Dr. Walid Alami. (Supplied)

“I wanted my children to grow up in Lebanon and know their motherland,” he told Arab News. “My hope was that I would replicate my American practice there, improve the system, innovate and take care of patients like I did in the US.

“But to my disappointment, things professionally didn’t go as planned because our system is corrupt, including the medical system.”

Undeterred, Alami persisted, hoping that the country’s fortunes would eventually turn around. But poor governance, institutional decay and the nation’s economic collapse soon started to take a toll on his family’s finances.

“I started losing money because of the banking system, the corruption and a decline in income,” he said. “Financially and professionally, I was doing worse than ever.”

By 2021, Alami decided enough was enough. He once again packed his bags and returned to the US to reunite with his family there. He had much less money in his pockets and more painful memories than a decade earlier.

The education of his two children was also affected by Lebanon’s economic collapse. He had trouble paying the university tuition fees for his daughter Noor, 21, who was studying at NYU in New York. Meanwhile, Jad, 18, was sent to a boarding school in the aftermath of the devastating port blast.

“It was my dream that they would have graduated from the American University in Beirut but that didn’t happen,” Alami said.

“In the last few years, I haven’t been able to generate enough cash for a small portion of my daughter’s living expenses. I found myself in a position where I could not afford to support my children’s education costs from Beirut, especially with the devaluation of the currency and the fact that our funds were seized.”




A Lebanese activist displays fake banknotes called "Lollars", in front of a mock ATM, during a stunt to denounce the high-level of corruption that has wrecked the country. (AFP)

Alami found himself in the position of having to borrow money from his family to help pay for his children’s education.

“I had no choice but to leave. And so, in 2021, I decided to return to the US,” he said. “I feel like my dreams were defeated. Going back to Lebanon, I was hoping to pay back my country of origin, emulate things on a professional and social level.”

Although Alami and his family were able to transition back to life in the US, the events of the past decade continue to cast a dark shadow.

“I am almost 60 years old and I am now finding myself starting all over again as a cardiologist,” he said. “But I have to do what I have to do to support my family.”

Alami’s story is a familiar one in Lebanon, as the nation of about 6.7 million people experiences one of the biggest waves of emigration in its history.

Since 2019, the country has been in the grip of its worst-ever financial crisis, compounded by the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic and protracted political paralysis.




Beirut's port blast of Aug. 4, 2021, which left 218 dead and 7,000 injured, was the last straw for many Lebanese. (AFP)

For many Lebanese, the final straw was the Beirut port explosion, in which at least 218 people were killed and 7,000 injured. It caused $15 billion in property damage, and left an estimated 300,000 people homeless.

Almost two years later, the country faces a worsening food crisis as the war in Ukraine sends the already high prices of staple foods skyrocketing.

According to the World Bank, Lebanon’s nominal gross domestic product fell from close to $52 billion in 2019 to $21.8 billion in 2021, a 58.1 percent contraction. Unless reforms are enacted soon, real GDP is projected to fall by 6.5 percent this year.

In May, the black-market value of the Lebanese pound fell to an all-time low of 35,600 against the US dollar. According to the UN, the financial crisis has plunged 82 percent of the population below the poverty line since late 2019.

Parliamentary elections in May offered a glimmer of hope that things might be changing. The Lebanese Forces party emerged as the largest Christian party for the first time, while the Hezbollah bloc lost its majority. However, it is not yet clear whether Hezbollah’s opponents will be able to form a cohesive and stable coalition capable of implementing administrative and economic reforms.

These concurrent uncertainties have sent thousands of young Lebanese abroad in search of security and opportunity, including many of the country’s top medical professionals and educators.

According to a report issued in February 2022 by Information International, the number of emigrants soared from 17,721 in 2020 to 79,134 in 2021 — its highest rate in five years. The Beirut-based research center identified the emigration rate as “the highest seen by Lebanon in five years.”

A sharp increase in emigration was also recorded between mid-December 2018 and mid-December 2019, with 66,800 Lebanese emigrating, compared with 33,841 during the same period in 2018.

Historically, many Lebanese chose to relocate to Western Europe, the US, Australia and the Arab Gulf states. More recently they also have been heading to Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Serbia and even Iraq.

According to Iraqi authorities, more than 20,000 people from Lebanon arrived between June 2021 and February 2022, not counting pilgrims visiting the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

FASTFACTS

Lebanon’s nominal GDP fell from $52bn in 2019 to $21.8bn 2021 (World Bank).

The Lebanese pound’s black-market value fell to 35,600 against the US dollar in May.

“The movement (of people) has recently increased,” Ali Habhab, Lebanon’s ambassador to Iraq, told the Agence France-Presse news agency. He said the health sector in particular has been affected by the influx, with “dozens of Lebanese doctors who offer their services” to Iraqi hospitals.

The UAE continues to be a favored destination for Lebanese with the financial means to relocate. Marianna Wehbe, 42, who runs a luxury PR firm, moved to Dubai in August 2021 to be with her daughter, Sophie, 17, who left Lebanon after the Beirut blast.

“Even during the (2019) revolution, the explosion and crisis, we all found ways to continue to operate and work with clients abroad,” Wehbe told Arab News.

“Most of those who left did so to be with their families and to have a safe and stable environment for their children. My daughter needed a place to study in safety and to keep her sanity. Beirut, with the electricity and internet cuts, was not that anymore. Her formative years are ahead of her.”




Paintings that represent migrating Lebanese youths are seen along a street in Beirut's Hamra district. (AFP file photo)

She said that, inevitably, some among this new generation of emigrants will begin to feel homesick after a time and, filled with a renewed sense of hope, may decide to go back.

“Lebanon has always been that way: You leave and then you come back,” said Wehbe. “You give up and then you have hope because we all want to go back home. So, many families are moving back in the hope that things are (getting) better.”

However, the American University of Beirut’s Crisis Observatory said in August 2021 that the current loss of talent will be difficult for Lebanon to overcome because it is the nation’s youth who are leaving.




Lebanon's famous American University has lost its luster as a result of the country's unmitigated economic crisis. (AFP file photo)

According to the results of an Arab Youth Opinion Survey published in 2020, about 77 percent of respondents in Lebanon said that they were thinking about emigrating — the highest percentage in any Arab country that year.

It is easy to see why so many young Lebanese would be looking for an exit strategy. According to the World Bank, an estimated one in five people have lost their jobs since October 2019, and 61 percent of companies have reduced permanent staff by an average of 43 percent.

“The exodus of the middle class in Lebanon is wiping out the country,” Alami told Arab News from his self-imposed exile in the US.




The increasing difficulties faces by families in Lebanon has forced many to seek better life abroad. (AFP)

“A nation is built on the middle class, and with all the engineers, bankers, lawyers and middle-class professionals leaving Lebanon, I think we will see the whole foundation crumble. It will be very hard to rebuild with the current situation.”

The World Health Organization estimated in September 2021 that more than nearly 40 percent of Lebanon’s doctors and nurses have left the country since October 2019.

“More than 35 percent of health professionals have left for the Gulf, Europe or the Americas to continue their careers,” said Alami.

“I don’t see myself going back in the next 10 years, from a professional standpoint, because there is no magic wand that is going to change things in Lebanon in the next decade. I just need to secure my children’s future now.”

 


Some in dry Somalia break Ramadan fast with little but water

Some in dry Somalia break Ramadan fast with little but water
Updated 29 March 2023

Some in dry Somalia break Ramadan fast with little but water

Some in dry Somalia break Ramadan fast with little but water

MOGADISHU: This year’s holy month of Ramadan coincides with the longest drought on record in Somalia. As the sun sets and Muslims around the world gather to break their daily fasts with generous dinners, Hadiiq Abdulle Mohamed and her family have just water and whatever food might be at hand.
Mohamed is among more than 1 million Somalis who have fled their homes in search of help while an estimated 43,000 people died last year alone. She and her husband and their six children now take refuge in one of the growing displacement camps around the capital, Mogadishu.
Ramadan brought an increase in food prices for a country already struggling with inflation caused in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the withering of local crops by five consecutive failed rainy seasons. Millions of livestock that are central to people’s diets have died.
Now food is even harder to come by for those displaced. For Ramadan, Mohamed and her family rely on well-wishers to provide their single meal a day. First, they break their fast with water and pieces of dates, then spoons of rice. Finally, they eat the donated meal of rice cooked with mixed meat, bruised banana and a small plastic bag of juice, which Mohamed waits in line for hours under the searing sun to obtain.
“I recall the Ramadan fast we had in the past when we were enjoying and prospering,” she said. “We would milk our goats, cook the ugali (maize porridge) and collard greens and drink water from our catchment. However, this year we are living in a camp, without plastic to cover us from rain, without food to eat, thirsty and experiencing drought. We have this small hot meal, but do you think that this can feed a family of six children, plus a mother and father? That is not possible.” The family once was prosperous and owned farmland and goats in a village about 140 kilometers (87 miles) west of the capital. Now they try to get by on the little money her husband makes by carrying goods in a wheelbarrow. But food prices have soared so much that his income is no longer enough to buy a 1 kilogram (2.2 pound) bag of rice.
The inflation in Somalia pinches the more well-off, too. The typical Ramadan fast-breaking meal includes samosas and other snacks; juice and tea and coffee; the main dish of rice or spaghetti or flatbread with camel, goat, chicken or fish; and finally, dessert.
The Horn of Africa country imports the majority of its food, from Ukraine-grown wheat to the bottles of Mountain Dew stocked in some gleaming Mogadishu shops. Meanwhile, prices of basics like rice and cooking oil continue to rise in parts of the country.
This month, World Food Program monitoring reported that supply chain resilience was generally good in Somalia, but the spike in demand for Ramadan would be “a disadvantage to vulnerable households who depend on local markets.”
“We are really experiencing a soaring price of food and another basic commodities,” said Ahmed Khadar Abdi Jama, a lecturer in economics at Somalia University. “Whenever there is an external factor that can reduce the supply of food, such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it is more likely that Somalis will feel a low supply.”
For example, a kilogram of camel meat that cost about $4 before the holy month now costs about $6. But this inflation will subside after the month is over, Khadar said.
Ramadan is a month of alms and forgiveness throughout the Muslim world. With the growing number of Somalis displaced by the drought, the imams of the mosques in Mogadishu are leading efforts to encourage the city’s wealthy and others who can afford it to sympathize with the poor and give generously.
“Some people need food to afford to break their fast,” said one imam, Sheikh Abdikarim Isse Ali. “Please help them.”


Netanyahu, Biden exchange frosty words over Israel legal overhaul

Netanyahu, Biden exchange frosty words over Israel legal overhaul
Updated 29 March 2023

Netanyahu, Biden exchange frosty words over Israel legal overhaul

Netanyahu, Biden exchange frosty words over Israel legal overhaul
  • Exchange a rare bout of public disagreement between the two close allies and signals building friction between Israel and the US

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday rebuffed President Joe Biden’s suggestion that the premier “walks away” from a contentious plan to overhaul the legal system, saying the country makes its own decisions.
The exchange was a rare bout of public disagreement between the two close allies and signals building friction between Israel and the US over Netanyahu’s judicial changes, which he postponed after massive protests.
Asked by reporters late Tuesday what he hopes the premier does with the legislation, Biden replied, “I hope he walks away from it.” The president added that Netanyahu’s government “cannot continue down this road” and urged compromise on the plan roiling Israel. The president also stepped around US Ambassador Thomas Nides’ suggestion that Netanyahu would soon be invited to the White House, saying, “No, not in the near term.”
Netanyahu replied that Israel is sovereign and “makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”
The frosty exchange came a day after Netanyahu called for a halt to his government’s contentious legislation “to avoid civil war” in the wake of two consecutive days of mass protests that drew tens of thousands of people to Israel’s streets.
“Hopefully the prime minister will act in a way that he can try to work out some genuine compromise. But that remains to be seen,” Biden said to reporters as he left North Carolina to return to Washington.
Netanyahu and his religious and ultranationalist allies announced the judicial overhaul in January just days after forming their government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history.
The proposal has plunged Israel into its worst domestic crisis in decades. Business leaders, top economists and former security chiefs have all come out against the plan, saying it is pushing the country toward dictatorship.
The plan would give Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges, and his allies the final say in appointing the nation’s judges. It would also give parliament, which is controlled by his allies, authority to overturn Supreme Court decisions and limit the court’s ability to review laws.
Critics say the legislation would concentrate power in the hands of the coalition in parliament and upset the balance of checks and balances between branches of government.
Netanyahu said he was “striving to achieve via a broad consensus” in talks with opposition leaders that began Tuesday.
Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in Israel’s parliament, wrote on Twitter that Israel was the US’s closest allies for decades but “the most radical government in the country’s history ruined that in three months.”


Israel parties discuss justice reforms after Netanyahu U-turn

Israel parties discuss justice reforms after Netanyahu U-turn
Updated 29 March 2023

Israel parties discuss justice reforms after Netanyahu U-turn

Israel parties discuss justice reforms after Netanyahu U-turn
  • Skepticism remains high over the negotiations on the judicial overhaul
  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bows to pressure in the face of a nationwide walkout Monday

JERUSALEM: Israel’s hard-right government and opposition parties were set for a second day of talks Wednesday on controversial judiciary reforms that sparked a general strike and mass protests in the country’s most severe domestic crisis in years.
Skepticism remained high over the negotiations on the judicial overhaul, which would curtail the authority of the Supreme Court and give politicians greater powers over the selection of judges.
US President Joe Biden, one of several Israeli allies to have voiced concern, urged Netanyahu to negotiate in good faith and warned against simply plowing ahead with the reforms.
A first day of talks between the government and the two main centrist opposition parties – Yesh Atid and the National Unity Party – was hosted by President Isaac Herzog Tuesday.
“After about an hour and a half, the meeting, which took place in a positive spirit, came to an end,” the president’s office said.
“Tomorrow (Wednesday), President Isaac Herzog will continue the series of meetings,” it added.
After three months of tensions that split the nation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bowed to pressure in the face of a nationwide walkout Monday.
The strike hit airports, hospitals and more, while tens of thousands of opponents of the reforms rallied outside parliament in Jerusalem.
“Out of a will to prevent a rupture among our people, I have decided to pause the second and third readings of the bill” to allow time for dialogue, the prime minister said in a broadcast.
The decision to halt the legislative process marked a dramatic U-turn for the premier, who just a day earlier announced he was sacking his defense minister who had called for the very same step.
The move was greeted with suspicion in Israel, with the president of the Israel Democracy Institute think-tank remarking that it did not amount to a peace deal.
“Rather, it’s a cease-fire perhaps for regrouping, reorganizing, reorienting and then charging – potentially – charging ahead,” Yohanan Plesner told journalists.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid reacted warily, saying on Monday that he wanted to be sure “there is no ruse or bluff.”
A joint statement Tuesday from Lapid’s Yesh Atid and the National Unity Party of Benny Gantz, a former defense minister, said talks would stop immediately “if the law is put on the Knesset’s (parliament’s) agenda.”
The US president warned that Israel “cannot continue down this road” of deepening division.
“Hopefully the prime minister will... try to work out some genuine compromise, but that remains to be seen,” Biden told reporters during a visit to North Carolina.
In a statement, Netanyahu said he appreciated Biden’s “longstanding commitment to Israel.”
But, he added: “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”
In an earlier statement, Netanyahu had said that the goal of the talks “is to reach an agreement.”
Activists, meanwhile, vowed to continue their rallies, which have persisted for weeks, sometimes drawing tens of thousands of protesters.
“We will not stop the protest until the judicial coup is completely stopped,” the Umbrella Movement of demonstrators said.
The crisis has revealed deep rifts within Netanyahu’s fledgling coalition, an alliance with far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in a tweet Monday, asserted “there will be no turning back” on the judicial overhaul.
Fellow far-right cabinet member, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, had pressed his supporters to rally in favor of the reforms.
Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party revealed on Monday that the decision to delay the legislation involved an agreement to expand the minister’s portfolio after he threatened to quit if the overhaul was put on hold.
Writing in the left-wing daily Haaretz, political correspondent Yossi Verter said the pause was “a victory for the protesters, but the one who really bent Netanyahu and trampled on him is Itamar Ben-Gvir.”
The affair has hit the coalition’s standing among the Israeli public, just three months after it took office.
Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party has dipped seven points, according to a poll by Israel’s Channel 12, which predicted the government would lose its majority in the 120-seat parliament if an election were held now.


Labor chiefs probe exploitation of Palestinian workers in Israel

Labor chiefs probe exploitation of Palestinian workers in Israel
Updated 29 March 2023

Labor chiefs probe exploitation of Palestinian workers in Israel

Labor chiefs probe exploitation of Palestinian workers in Israel
  • More than 120 killed in past 15 months

RAMALLAH: The powerful International Labor Organization is investigating allegations of ill-treatment and exploitation of Palestinian workers in Israel.

Palestinian leaders have handed a dossier to a fact-finding committee from the organization showing that the Israeli army killed 93 Palestinian workers in Israel in 2022, and a further 31 so far this year.

The report also detailed abuse of Palestinian workers at military checkpoints and barriers, the absence of occupational health and safety standards, and illegal working hours.

The dossier was handed over by Shaher Saad, secretary-general of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions.  Saad also told investigators that brokers and illegal middlemen were deducting about $34 million a month in fees taken from workers’ salaries, which prevented the implementation of a working social security system in Palestine.

About 170,000 Palestinians from the West Bank work in Israel or in illegal Israeli settlements, and 17,000 from the Gaza Strip. Each month they are required to pay about 2,500 shekels ($780) in fees for a work permit, in a system that is riddled with corruption.

A report in 2021 by the Institute for National Security Studies suggests that people illegally selling work permits had annual revenue of 1 billion shekels from about 40,000 Palestinian workers.

Meanwhile Israeli armed forces’ assaults against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have continued with increasing frequency during Ramadan, Palestinian sources told to Arab News.

On Tuesday, the Israeli army arrested 13 citizens from different parts of the West Bank. At the same time, and for the fourth consecutive day, it continued to tighten its grip on the town of Huwara, south of Nablus.

Kamal Odeh, Fatah secretary in Huwara, said that the Israeli army had deployed intensively on the main street, setting up several barriers and trying to divert citizens’ routes through secondary streets inside the town.Soldiers turned several houses along the main street in the center of Huwara into military barracks.

“The security situation around Nablus is frightening,” Amer Hamdan, a rights activist from Nablus, told Arab News.

Israeli bulldozers also demolished three agricultural facilities in the Al-Sawahra wilderness, east of Jerusalem, and a commercial facility in Deir Ballut, west of Salfit.

Maj. Gen. Abdullah Kamil, the governor of Salfit, said demolitions by Israeli authorities in Salfit served the occupation’s plans to uproot Palestinian citizens from their lands in order to build more Israeli settlements.
 


Israeli forces tighten security measures against Palestinians

Israeli security forces patrol in the West Bank town of Huwara, on March 26, 2023. (AFP)
Israeli security forces patrol in the West Bank town of Huwara, on March 26, 2023. (AFP)
Updated 29 March 2023

Israeli forces tighten security measures against Palestinians

Israeli security forces patrol in the West Bank town of Huwara, on March 26, 2023. (AFP)
  • Sources said that the settlers attacked houses and burned vehicles under the protection of Israeli army forces, who assaulted citizens

RAMALLAH: Israeli armed forces’ assaults against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have continued with increasing frequency during Ramadan, Palestinian sources confirmed to Arab News.

On Tuesday, the Israeli army arrested 13 citizens from different parts of the West Bank. At the same time, and for the fourth consecutive day, it continued to tighten its grip on the town of Huwara, south of Nablus.

Kamal Odeh, Fatah secretary in Huwara, said that the Israeli army has deployed intensively on the main street, setting up several barriers and trying to divert citizens’ routes through secondary streets inside the town.

According to eyewitnesses, the Israeli army turned several houses along the main street in the center of Huwara into military barracks.

Amer Hamdan, a human rights activist from Nablus, told Arab News that it usually takes him one hour to drive from Nablus to Ramallah. Today, however, the trip took him two and a half hours due to Israeli military checkpoints in Huwara.

“The security situation around Nablus is ad frightening,” Hamdan told Arab News.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Israeli bulldozers demolished three agricultural facilities in the Al-Sawahra wilderness, east of Jerusalem, and a commercial facility in Deir Ballut, west of Salfit.

Maj. Gen. Abdullah Kamil, the governor of Salfit, said that the policy of demolishing homes and facilities by the Israeli authorities in Salfit is one of the most egregious and inhumane practices and that it serves the occupation’s plans to uproot Palestinian citizens from their lands in order to build more Israeli settlements.

During the past hours, settler militias have launched a large-scale attack on Huwara, south of Nablus.

Sources said that the settlers attacked houses and burned vehicles under the protection of Israeli army forces, who assaulted citizens.

On Tuesday, settlers cut down 14 olive trees in the lands of Husan village, west of Bethlehem, after they had also cut down 50 olive trees in that area about 10 days ago.

Separately, Secretary-General of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions Shaher Saad handed over to the Fact-Finding Committee of the International Labor Organization an annual report on violations against Palestinian workers inside Israel.

The paper included the number of Palestinian workers killed by the Israeli army — 93 in the year 2022, and 31 in the first two and a half months of 2023 — and the risks that workers are exposed to while passing through barriers and openings, in addition to violations related to brokers who deduct approximately $34 million from workers’ salaries per month.

Saad explained to the committee that the Israeli government’s procedures for handing over workers’ money to the Israeli Otaim company threaten their rights and prevent the implementation of social security in Palestine.

The report also included the daily violations that workers face, especially in the absence of occupational health and safety standards, including working hours that extend beyond those legally established.

Some 140,000 Palestinians from the West Bank are working in Israel, 30,000 in Israeli settlements, and 17,000 from the Gaza Strip.

Qadura Faris, the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, told Arab News that since 2021, cases of cancer among Palestinian security prisoners have been increasing, with 24 prisoners currently suffering from the disease.

He confirmed that the prison administration has deliberately pursued a policy of medical negligence toward prisoners, which has led to the death of 75 prisoners out of the 236 who have died in prisons since 1967.

“The policy of medical negligence is the most dangerous policy pursued by the Israeli prison administration,” Faris told Arab News, adding that about 700 sick prisoners diagnosed in Israeli prisons have faced difficult health conditions over the past years, including about 200 who suffer from chronic diseases.

Israel has 4,780 Palestinian security prisoners in its jails.