British human rights group FairSquare on Friday urged the Indian government not to send its citizens to Israel to replace Palestinian workers who have been deported, saying it would be a “craven green-light for war crimes”.
In a statement, FairSquare said that the Builders Association of Israel had on November 1 announced that it hoped to get 1 lakh Indian workers to the country as Israeli forces waged war on Gaza. Israel launched the assault in retaliation for a deadly attack by Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, on October 7.
On November 3, thousands of Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip were deported to the besieged territory, reported the Associated Press.
Their work permits were arbitrarily cancelled after the conflict began, FairSquare said. “Thousands were illegally detained in Israel amidst credible allegations of serious abuses including torture,” the non-governmental organisation focused on migrant worker rights added.
On Thursday, India’s foreign ministry said that Israel has made no request to recruit workers from the country but indicated that New Delhi would be open to such an agreement. Any such initiative “if taken up, would be long-term”, ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said.
In its statement, FairSquare warned that agreeing to such requests would further enable Israel’s war crimes.
Palestinian officials have said that 10,812 Gaza residents have been killed in air and artillery strikes by Israel since the fighting started last month. About 40% of the victims are children.
“As one of the world’s largest democracies, India should devote its efforts to ensuring a ceasefire not profiting from more violence,” FairSquare Director Nicholas McGeehan said.
The organisation flagged “serious risk” of exploitation of Indian workers if sent to Israel.
It said that 57.3% of 1,93,000 Palestinians worked in Israel and settlements in the West Bank in 2022. But the United Nations Security Council has described the settlements as “a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace”, FairSquare noted.
The group said allowing recruitment of Indian workers would support economic activity in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory. This would also enable Israel’s “forced displacement of the Palestinian population”, it added.
FairSquare even highlighted that international trade unions have accused Israel of exploiting Palestinian workers employed in construction sector.
According to a Human Rights Watch report in 2015, Thai workers in Israel’s agriculture sector were paid salaries below the legal minimum wage, forced to work long hours, subjected to unsafe working conditions, denied their right to change employers and housed in non-residential structures.
There are 18,000 Indians working in Israel, with the majority employed as caregivers, FairSquare said on Friday. In May, Israel signed an agreement with India allowing another 42,000 Indian workers, most of them from construction sector, to migrate for work.
FairSquare’s appeal came on the same day when major Indian trade unions also requested the Centre not to send any workers to Israel as such a step would amount to “complicity” with Israel’s war on Gaza.
On Friday, Israel revised downwards the toll from the October 7 attack by Hamas to approximately 1,200 against a previous government estimate of over 1,400, AFP reported.
“It is due to the fact that there were a lot of corpses that were not identified and now we think those belong to terrorists...not Israeli casualties,” spokesperson of Israel’s foreign ministry said.
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