State siphoned off Palestinian workers’ insurance

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http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=167193

Report : For over 20 years, Israel withheld over NIS 1b. from laborers
for national insurance.

The government of Israel has siphoned over a billion shekels in money
taken from Palestinian laborers for national insurance between 1970-
1994, a report released on Wednesday states.

According to the report, compiled by the workers’ rights organization
Kav LaOved, between the years 1970-1994 over NIS 1 billion wa withheld from Palestinian workers’ salaries in order to pay their
national insurance, but in practice, the report states, the money was
instead funneled to the Finance Ministry and used to pay National
Labor Union fees, even while the workers were not given membership in the Union. .

Kav LaOved said that during those years, Palestinian workers would
receive an invoice with their paycheck that detailed a sum withdrawn
for national insurance. According to the report’s findings, only 7.63
percent of the withheld funds went to pay for the workers’ insurance,
with the remainder being funneled to the Finance Ministry.

In the report, entitled « State Robbery, » Kav LaOved cites a letter
received in 1993 from the Finance Ministry saying that the money
withheld went to pay the civilian authorities in the West Bank in
order to fund infrastructure programs.

Hannah Zohar, the author of the report and director of Kav LaOved,
said she presumes that the infrastructure programs in question had to
do with the construction of settlements.> The Finance Ministry has denied the allegations.

The report describes the 1991 legal case in which the Flower Growers
Union petitioned the High Court demanding the return of funds that
were not used for the national insurance payments as intended. The
court ruled in their favor and forced the government to return
approximately NIS 4.7 million to employers and their workers.

Zohar told the Post on Thursday that the court case should have set a
legal precedent leading to the return of all the money siphoned away
from national insurance payments, but instead has been largely
forgotten.

The Finance Ministry issued a statement Thursday denying the
allegations, adding that the report is based on « confusion over the
different roles carried out by separate branches of the government. »

The Histadrut labor federation called the report « full of lies » and
« baseless » and accused Kav LaOved of coming to their conclusions
before conducting their research, with the findings having « no
connection to reality. »

The Government Payments Branch did not respond to the report.