Indian Workers Replace Palestinians in Israel's Building Sector

Indian builders work on a construction site in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on December 23, 2024. (Photo by Menahem KAHANA / AFP)
Indian builders work on a construction site in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on December 23, 2024. (Photo by Menahem KAHANA / AFP)
TT
20

Indian Workers Replace Palestinians in Israel's Building Sector

Indian builders work on a construction site in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on December 23, 2024. (Photo by Menahem KAHANA / AFP)
Indian builders work on a construction site in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on December 23, 2024. (Photo by Menahem KAHANA / AFP)

Wearing a safety belt, helmet and work boots, Raju Nishad navigates the scaffolding, hammering blocks that will form part of a building in a new neighborhood in central Israel's town of Beer Yaakov.

While he and other Indians working alongside him do not look out of place on the expansive construction site, they are relative newcomers to Israel's building industry.

They are part of an Israeli government effort to fill a void left by tens of thousands of Palestinian construction workers barred from entering Israel since Hamas's unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack.

If that attack had not happened, this site, with its slowly emerging high-rise towers, homes, roads and pavements, would have teemed with laborers speaking Arabic -- unlike the Hindi, Hebrew and even Mandarin of today.

The Hamas attack triggered the deadliest war yet between Israel and militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

It later spread to include other Iran-backed groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi militias in Yemen, and even direct confrontation with Iran itself.

None of this deterred Nishad, 35, from coming to Israel.

"There's nothing to be afraid of here," he said, despite several air raid warnings that have sent him running for the shelters.

"Once it (the siren) stops, we just resume our work," he told AFP.

High earnings in Israel, where some workers can make three times what they would back home, are the key to why people like Nishad flock here, thousands of kilometers (miles) away.

"I'm saving for the future, planning to make wise investments and do something meaningful for my family," Nishad said.

He is just one of around 16,000 workers who have come from India over the past year -- and Israel has plans to bring thousands more.

India is the world's fifth-largest economy and one of the fastest growing, but it has also struggled to generate enough full-time jobs for millions of people.

Indians have been employed in Israel for decades, thousands as caregivers looking after elderly Israelis, while others work as diamond traders and IT professionals.

But since the war in Gaza escalated, recruiters have launched a drive to bring Indians in for Israel's construction sector also.

Samir Khosla, chairman of Delhi-based Dynamic Staffing Services, which has sent about 500,000 Indians to work in more than 30 countries, has so far brought more than 3,500 workers to Israel, a new market for him.

Khosla himself arrived for the first time a month after the October 7 attack, after the authorities appealed for foreign workers in the construction industry, which ground to a halt when the Gaza war broke out.

"We didn't know much about the market, and there wasn't an incumbent workforce from India here," Khosla said.

"We really had to move around and understand the needs," he said, adding that he believed India was a natural choice for Israel given their "excellent relations.”

He now hopes to bring in up to 10,000 Indian laborers, as he has a large pool of skilled Indian workers across all trades.

In nearby Tel Aviv, a group of Indians live in a small flat where, in addition to the construction skills they brought with them, they have also learned to cook the familiar spicy dishes they miss from home.

"In a short time, one can earn more money" in Israel, said Suresh Kumar Verma, 39. Like Nishad, he is from India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. Verma works on a construction site north of Israel's commercial capital.

"Making money is also necessary... It's important to continue working hard for the family's future."

Israeli researchers believe the number of Indians working in construction still does not match the number of Palestinians who did so before the war, and this is hampering the sector's overall growth.

Before the Hamas attack, around 80,000 Palestinians were employed in construction, along with some 26,000 foreigners, Eyal Argov of the central Bank of Israel said.

Now there are about 30,000 foreigners employed, far fewer than the previous overall workforce figures, he said, adding that activity in the current quarter of 2024 is about 25 percent below pre-war levels.

"These numbers (of Indians) are still very low," Argov said.

While this does not create an immediate "shortage of housing, it may cause delays in the supply of new housing,” he said.

"Israel has a growing population, increasing by two percent annually, and this delay might lead to some shortage in the future."



Trump Says He Expects Hamas Decision in 24 Hours on 'Final' Peace Proposal

Children check the destruction at Mustafa Hafez school, sheltering Palestinians displaced by the war, after the school was hit during an overnight Israeli strike in Gaza City, on July 3, 2025, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
Children check the destruction at Mustafa Hafez school, sheltering Palestinians displaced by the war, after the school was hit during an overnight Israeli strike in Gaza City, on July 3, 2025, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TT
20

Trump Says He Expects Hamas Decision in 24 Hours on 'Final' Peace Proposal

Children check the destruction at Mustafa Hafez school, sheltering Palestinians displaced by the war, after the school was hit during an overnight Israeli strike in Gaza City, on July 3, 2025, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
Children check the destruction at Mustafa Hafez school, sheltering Palestinians displaced by the war, after the school was hit during an overnight Israeli strike in Gaza City, on July 3, 2025, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

US President Donald Trump said on Friday it would probably be known in 24 hours whether the Palestinian group Hamas has agreed to accept what he has called a "final proposal" for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza.

Trump said on Tuesday Israel had accepted the conditions needed to finalize a 60-day ceasefire with Hamas, during which the parties will work to end the war.

He was asked on Friday if Hamas had agreed to the latest ceasefire deal framework, and said: "We'll see what happens, we are going to know over the next 24 hours."

A source close to Hamas said on Thursday the group sought guarantees that the new US-backed ceasefire proposal would lead to the end of Israel's war in Gaza.

Two Israeli officials said those details were still being worked out. Dozens of Palestinians were killed on Thursday in Israeli strikes, according to Gaza authorities.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered in October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, Israeli tallies show.

Gaza's health ministry says Israel's subsequent military assault has killed over 56,000 Palestinians. It has also caused a hunger crisis, internally displaced Gaza's entire population and prompted accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice and of war crimes at the International Criminal Court. Israel denies the accusations.

A previous two month ceasefire ended when Israeli strikes killed more than 400 Palestinians on March 18. Trump earlier this year proposed a US takeover of Gaza, which was condemned globally by rights experts, the UN and Palestinians as a proposal of "ethnic cleansing."