RAMALLAH, Saturday, February 20, 2021 (WAFA) – Some 94,000 Palestinian workers in Israel will resume as of tomorrow daily travel to their workplaces inside Israel after the latter has ended the ban on the daily movement of the Palestinian workers imposed almost a year ago to combat the coronavirus pandemic, today said Shaher Saad, head of the General Federation of Palestinian Workers’ Unions.
The Israeli government said yesterday it will allow the Palestinian workers to return to work in Israel through the dozens of crossings along the West Bank on a daily basis and that the workers will no longer be required to stay at their workplaces for long periods, but rather to return to their homes in the occupied West Bank at the end of their workday and come back to work the next morning through the official Israeli-army run crossings.
Saad told WAFA in a telephone interview that the Israeli corona lockdown has affected the daily livelihood of 75 percent of the Palestinian workers in Israel, who were not allowed to travel back and forth from their homes to the workplaces and told that they have to stay at the workplace for a long period of time if they want to work in Israel.
This policy has changed now, he said, with Israel allowing the workers to reach their workplaces on a daily basis and through the official crossings rather than the unofficial openings and holes in the separation barrier that runs along the West Bank lines with Israel, which posed a grave risk to the life of the workers who were shot at by the soldiers and either killed or injured or pursued, detained and beaten.
Saad also said that yesterday’s agreement between the Palestinian and Israeli health ministries allows the Palestinian workers to get vaccinated at the crossings.
The agreement says Israel would vaccinate 100,000 Palestinian workers who commute to Israel for work every day with the Moderna vaccine.
Saad said the vaccination would take place at the crossings without specifying a date for this but said that he expects it to kick off in the coming days once the vaccines are made available for the Palestinian medics who would assume this mission.
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